


A Benediction on the Dead

by IndigoNight



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Background Erica/Boyd, Background canon-current Scott/Allison, M/M, Minor OC Death, Pseudo-necromancy, Temporary Character Death, very slow build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 19:43:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 58,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndigoNight/pseuds/IndigoNight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things are different after Stiles dies. Derek's bite brought him back to life, but life doesn't seem to fit him quite right anymore.  He is not a werewolf, but he's no longer human either. Filled with rage that isn't his and magic he doesn't understand, Stiles is caught between the cold void of death and the wild life of the werewolves. Part necromancer and part pack, Stiles must regain his footing in the living world, navigate the rocky emotional terrain that is Derek Hale, and prevent an ancient, corrupted spirit from stealing his second chance at life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, I barely even know what to say. This thing has been five months in production and it has been a crazy ride. Entry for the [ Teen Wolf Superbang ](http://tnwolfsuperbang.livejournal.com/).
> 
> HUGE thank you to my two wonderful betas, [ Chai ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtydirtychai/) & [ Greenberg ](http://damnitgreenberg.tumblr.com/). Seriously guys, I cannot thank you enough. This fic would not be the story it is without all of your help.
> 
> Also huge thanks to paperclipmagnets for the [Fabulous](http://paperclipmagnets.tumblr.com/post/41340281570/art-for-a-benediction-on-the-dead-by-indigonight#notes) [ art ](http://paperclipmagnets.tumblr.com/post/41340351015/because-you-really-want-terrifying-stiles-feels-in#notes) [ work ](http://paperclipmagnets.tumblr.com/post/41343624353/and-a-bonus-puppy-pile-doodle-for-a-benediction-on#notes).

________________________________________  
Prologue  
________________________________________

_It wasn’t so bad, being dead, he decided, at least not at first. It certainly wasn’t good. But it didn’t hurt, so that was something._

_He didn’t actually feel anything. He didn’t see anything either, though he was pretty sure there was nothing to see, just blackness. Stiles kind of liked the dark, actually. There was nothing to hear, either. He tried to speak, just so that he could hear his own voice, only to realize he didn’t have a mouth to speak with. And without a mouth, he also didn’t have a body. Without a body, he couldn’t feel anything, no skin to touch, no nerve endings to sends signals and no brain to receive them. But he was still thinking, at least he thought he was, and that would definitely be making his head hurt if he had one._

_But when he let himself just stop over thinking it, it was kind of nice. After fighting for so long, after so much pain and fear and grief, he was just so tired. He’d spent his whole life fighting, fighting his own body, fighting his grief, fighting for his dad’s love, fighting Scott’s stubbornness, and lately fighting psychotic murderers. There was no fight left in him. He was sorry to leave his life of course; on the whole, it hadn’t been so bad. He didn’t want to leave Scott, or the pack, or most of all his dad - god, his dad - but he didn’t really have a choice. They’d get on without him, Scott would look out for his dad, and Derek would look out for Scott, of course then who would look out for Derek?_

_It didn’t matter. It wasn’t his job to take care of everyone anymore. His fight was done. So he floated, at ease, letting the quiet and the dark surround him, letting peace fill him._

_But it wasn’t regular darkness that surrounded him, not in the strictly absence-of-light sense. There was something heavier to it, as though the darkness was filled with something he couldn’t see, hear, or feel, and all too soon it began to press down on him, thick and suffocating. There was movement too, which should have been impossible in a place distinctly lacking in physics. But he somehow just knew that there was movement, something, a lot of somethings shifting, swirling around him, phantom fingers reaching out for him, grasping at him._

_The peace vanished, replaced by a cold emptiness that sort of reminded him of the dementors in Harry Potter. He didn’t like this place anymore, it was heavy, pressing down on him, suffocating him. Somehow, he knew this wasn’t right, this place wasn’t for him. He wasn’t supposed to be here!_

________________________________________  
Chapter 1  
________________________________________

“Stop pouting,” Stiles chided without looking away from the road in front of him. He didn’t need to look to know that Scott was, in fact, pouting.

“I’m not pouting,” Scott protested.

“Yes, you are, so quit it. Seriously, what could be bad here?” he added reasonably, “You get to spend a few hours frolicking in the woods with your wolf-y brethren. You’ll hunt some rabbits, pee on a few trees, I don’t know."

Scott wrinkled his nose. “I’m not peeing on any trees,” he deadpanned.

“Whatever. The point is this will be good for you. And if nothing else it means you have a valid excuse not to get started on your English paper yet.”

Scott huffed, resting his forehead against the passenger side window, staring morosely out at the trees as they drove. It was a relatively long trek up the winding, unpaved road that lead to the derelict Hale house, but it was one that by now they both probably knew blindfolded.

They continued in silence for several minutes before Stiles gave in to the urge to fill it. For once, he even had something important to say; he’d wanted to say it for a long while now, but had never figured out how to bring it up. So, on impulse, he blurted, “You should join the pack.”

Scott sat up, frowning at him. “You know I’m not going to do that.”

Stiles sighed, shaking his head in frustration. “I know you think you don’t want to do that,” he corrected, “But really, why not? I mean, yeah, at first there was the whole Allison thing, and the whole not trusting Derek thing, and then the whole Gerard thing left everyone a little sour for a while. But we’re past that now aren’t we?”

Scott just made an unimpressed noise.

“We know Derek’s not a psycho now,” he continued to press, unable to stop, “And you’ve been hanging out some with Isaac and Jackson anyway, and I know you like it. And not just in the sense that, now that Isaac’s stopped being a little scary and Jackson’s less of an ass, they’re kind of fun to hang out with; you’re more relaxed after you spend time with them, less all wound up and... growly.”

“I’m not growly,” Scott growled. Stiles looked at him with a pointedly raised eyebrow.

“Wolves are social creatures, Scott,” he pointed out rationally. “They form packs for a reason.”

“I thought they form packs because there’s strength in numbers.” Well hey, Scott got points for listening to at least some of the research Stiles had done for him.

“That too. But also the social thing. I think you need to be around other wolves.” Scott’s shoulders were squared and he was looking determinedly straight ahead; Stiles wasn’t getting through to him. “Derek said that a lot of omegas eventually go crazy. Some of them lose track of their humanity, end up going feral and living in the woods like animals. Of course, that is unless they go psycho and start killing people.”

“I’m not going to lose my humanity. Or go psycho. Besides, what the hell? Are you talking to Derek about me now?” Whoops, Scott was angry.

“No. A little. Dude, I’m worried about you, okay?” They were almost to the house now, he had to find a way to turn this around so that Scott didn’t insist on immediately going back home. “Derek is too. We all are. And really, would it be so bad? You wouldn’t have to spend full moons hiding alone in your room anymore. You’d be stronger, faster, and more relaxed. You’d have a whole group of people guaranteed to care about you and support you.” He sighed and shook his head, ready to give up. “I’d love to have that,” he added in a mutter. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but it slipped out before he could stop it, and he knew Scott heard.

Luckily, they pulled up in front of the remains of the Hale house before Scott had the chance to respond, and Isaac came bounding over.

Isaac had changed a lot over the past few months; most of them had. He stared menacingly at people less these days and generally didn't behave as much like a sociopath. He still brooded a lot, and he hadn’t ditched the leather yet, both of which Stiles chose to blame on Derek being a bad influence. But at least around the other wolves he was a lot more like the excited, eager-to-please kid Stiles vaguely remembered from elementary school.

He stopped a few steps away from Scott’s door, waiting for him to get out. His expression was shy, but there was a sort of vibration to his body language that made Stiles imagine an invisible tail wagging furiously. The tension was slight enough that the fact that Stiles had noticed it at all was probably a sign he was spending entirely too much time with werewolves lately. It was nice though, and, just as Stiles had suspected, as soon as Scott saw Isaac, something in his own posture relaxed. As Scott climbed out of the Jeep, his scowl melted into the beginnings of a smile.

The thing that Scott, and really the rest of the werewolves too, tend to forget a lot is that Stiles is smart. He may not be super fast, or strong. He may not be able to rip apart metal with his bare hands or tear people's throats out. But thinking? Observing, deducing, strategizing, that's his thing. All that crap Derek spewed about wolves needing a pack was, according to Stiles' observations, not crap at all. Unfortunately, Scott was stubborn, and Derek was worse, and none of them seemed to have any idea what they were doing. That left it up to Stiles to come up with a plan that not only kept them all alive, but also reasonably happy and not at all homicidal. 

Hence the play date. It wasn't Stiles' first attempt at encouraging pack bonding over the past few weeks. Of course, it was one thing to come up with a plan, and another thing entirely to get the werewolves to actually go along with it. Movie night had been such an unmitigated disaster that it had been mutually decided that no one would ever speak of it again, and bowling had nearly resulted in Erica ripping off Jackson's head. Here's hoping the third time would be the charm.

Derek hadn’t followed Isaac over, though he was watching from up by the porch. He’d foregone his usual leather jacket, but his t-shirt was equally black and much tighter than necessary. Derek's arms were crossed, forcing the shirt to work particularly hard to contain his biceps. Stiles was a little disconcerted to realize that he could now recognize Derek's posture as a sulk. While Derek was at least self aware enough to acknowledge that his so-called pack was barely holding it together, after the last two complete failures he hadn't been thrilled about Stiles' proposed third plan; a picnic, of all things. Maybe Stiles was a little self conscious, but he was pretty sure Derek had almost burst into hysterical laughter when he'd proposed the idea, which was a terrifying thought in and of itself. But, though he hadn't actually said it, Stiles knew Derek was still eager to convince Scott to join the pack, and it wasn't like Derek had come up with a better plan.

Isaac’s smile dimmed a little when Stiles too climbed out of the Jeep, picnic basket in hand. “What are you doing here?” He scowled. “This is a pack outing.”

Stiles glowered at him. He knew Isaac was a generally good guy, he could see it in the way he acted around Scott and the other wolves, but that didn’t mean the two of them particularly got along. It might have had something to do with Isaac’s recent attempts to worm his way into the position of Scott’s bestest friend. It also might have had something to do with the fact that Isaac was still having some difficulty playing nice with the humans.

“I was invited,” he retorted, childish though it was.

At the same time Scott chided, “Be nice,” and Derek began to head toward him, that little, ever so familiar scowl between his eyebrows.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Derek greeted cautiously, eyes on Scott.

Scott shrugged noncommittally. “I didn’t really have much choice.” That made Derek glance over at Stiles, who did his best to look as sweetly innocent as possible; there may have been a little threatening, bribing, and conniving. But now the trick would be getting Scott to stay.

“Where’s everyone else?” Scott deflected.

“Jackson got roped into family time, Erica got grounded and is trying not to further piss off her parents, and Boyd said he has too much homework,” Isaac supplied helpfully, “So it’s just us."

That was a somewhat disappointing hitch in the plan. But getting Derek and Scott to at least tolerate each other better was definitely an important step. Five hormonal, super powered werewolves were a lot to deal with all at once; maybe this would be easier with just Derek and Isaac, who Scott already liked anyway.

Scott eyed Derek unenthusiastically. “Great.”

“Play nice,” Stiles teased, coming around the side of the Jeep to join them. “After all the trouble I went through making werewolf-sized lunches, someone had better eat them.” He tried not to stop and think too hard about the fact that he was basically giving up his Saturday to chaperone a werewolf play date. It was for the greater good and future peace in Beacon Hills, so Stiles was going to suck it up.

They stood around in awkward silence for a few minutes, and Stiles was just about to say something inappropriate - he wasn’t exactly sure what it would be yet, but it would be inappropriate, it always was - when Derek saved them by simply saying, “Let’s go.” And so they set off trekking through the woods. Derek led the way, walking purposefully, though as far as Stiles couldn’t tell they weren’t going anywhere in particular.

Stiles was not a big fan of wandering around in the woods. Especially not carrying a heavy picnic basket. Especially not with werewolves who never seem to get tired, or out of breath, or sweaty, or bored. He considered making one of the wolves carry the basket - to be fair it was only so heavy because werewolves have ridiculously high metabolisms and eat a ridiculous amount to keep up with it - but he didn’t. It was bad enough being the only human in superhuman company, and Isaac at least already looked down on him; he refused to let them think he couldn’t keep up. His only consolation was that Derek was walking right in front of him, and the seat of Derek's pants were straining just as much as the sleeves of his shirt had been earlier. It was definitely more entertaining to look at than trees.

They walked mostly in silence. It was sort of eerie actually, since Derek made almost no noise as they trampled through underbrush. Scott not so much, but he was certainly quieter than Stiles was used to. At least Isaac was making noise, but only because he'd wandered off the path to whack at bushes with a stick. Stiles, of course, sounded like a herd of uncoordinated elephants.

Despite the cool autumn air, Stiles was starting to get hot and sweaty in his hoodie. He was just about to ask, as cliché-ly and annoyingly as possible, if they were there yet, when a scream rent the air. Stiles tensed, heart rate picking up automatically as he recognized Isaac's voice. He could just barely see Isaac's upper half around a thick tree trunk, where he was writhing on the ground. The other wolves were racing to his side faster than Stiles could blink, and he was left to jog awkwardly after them, basket banging against his side.

Isaac had managed to sit up by the time Stiles arrived, his face clenched in pain as he clutched his leg, which was caught in the iron jaws of a massive bear trap. Blood was soaking through the leg of his jeans and his breath was coming in sharp, low hisses. Derek knelt next to the trap, attempting to find a way to pull it off of Isaac without hurting him further. He touched the jaws of the trap, but pulled his hands away quickly with a grunt.

“Wolfsbane,” he informed them, frowning. “But mild. This trap is meant to slow down, not kill.”

“Well get it off him,” Scott urged from where he knelt on the other side of Isaac, helping to support his weight. His hand was on Isaac's neck, fingers slipped beneath the collar of his t-shirt and Stiles could see the thick, black veins running up Scott's wrist. Stiles had almost done back flips when Scott first showed him that particular trick. It was pretty freaking awesome. Except the werewolves didn't usually use it on each other; they usually didn't need to. Which meant Isaac was hurt bad, really bad.

Derek gave Scott an exasperated look, but reached out toward the trap again.

“Wait,” Stiles interjected with a flash of inspiration. Setting the basket down, he dug around and pulled out the blanket he’d brought for them to sit on. “Will this help?”

Derek took it, wrapping it around his hands before he began gently prying the trap off of Isaac’s leg. Isaac growled, claws popping out to dig into the soft soil he sat on, teeth bared in pain. Scott placed his spare hand on Isaac's knee, helping to steady him and keep him from thrashing, while Stiles continued to hover helplessly.

“I thought you and the Argents had some sort of truce,” Stiles muttered to Derek, though of course they all heard him.

“We do,” Derek answered shortly, voice clipped as though he was talking through his teeth.

“So wha-”

“Get him out of here,” Derek cut him off. The trap’s jaw snapped shut again as soon as he released them, though they were now safely empty. Scott helped lever Isaac to his feet. Isaac’s hands, now tipped with completely human fingernails again, curled tightly into Scott’s shirt for support. “Go!” Obediently, Scott half supported, half carried Isaac back in the direction they’d come.

Derek, however, had turned his attention in the opposite direction. He stood stock-still, staring out into the trees with furrowed eyebrows and tense shoulders. A strange feeling began to creep up Stiles’ spine, something static-y and buzzing, like the atmosphere just before a massive lightning strike. It raised the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck and tickled his nose until he sneezed. “What is that?” he wheezed, knowing Derek felt it too.

Derek apparently hadn’t realized Stiles was still beside him until he spoke, and his first instinct was to reach out and push Stiles back in the direction the others had gone. “Get out of here,” he growled.

Stiles shook his head; he wasn’t refusing to leave, he couldn’t leave. The air around them was crackling and Stiles felt bizarrely detached from his body, as though the static from the atmosphere had infiltrated his brain and short circuited it, destroying his ability to think. “What’s happening?” he asked, though his tongue felt thick and clumsy.

The alpha’s eyes shifted sideways toward him, glowing that eerie red that always sent thrills down Stiles’ spine. “Magic,” he said, voice tight as though speaking took effort for him too.

Stiles’ lips mimicked the word, eyes widening as his mind fought against the numbing effect making it slow. Magic? He loved magic. Had he spent a significant amount of his middle school days waiting for his Hogwarts acceptance letter? Yes. Had he secretly tried to make his pencil levitate with his mind a few times? Definitely. But he had a sneaking suspicion that this wasn’t quite that type of magic, and if the weird static in his brain was anything to go off of this was not going to be the fun he’d always imagined.

Suddenly, there was a crashing through the underbrush, followed by the shape of a guy; a panting, sweaty guy with pretty severe acne and a haircut that looked like he’d gotten it in his mother’s kitchen. He wasn’t exactly overweight, but he definitely wasn’t fit either. His Star Wars t-shirt had to strain just a little more than necessary to cover his gut, and he clearly wasn’t used to doing much running.

The stranger froze when he saw them, eyes going wide with surprise. Whatever he’d been expecting, Derek and Stiles weren’t it. Derek didn’t seem to care, though; he launched himself at the man without a second thought. As far as lunging went, it wasn't Derek's finest. Derek’s movements were unusually slow and uncoordinated, and the stranger recovered himself quickly. He fumbled at his pockets, managing to retrieve a glass vial in time to toss it at Derek. The vial shattered and Derek froze mid-step, face locked in a fang-y snarl.

Stiles just gaped at them, still trapped under the effects of the first spell. He didn’t know what was going on but his mind was screaming at him to do something, to run away, to shout for help, to rush to Derek’s aid, _something_.

Derek growled, muscles visibly straining. But when a minute passed and he hadn’t moved, the witch seemed to relax. He fumbled with his pocket again, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper and began to read haltingly in what Stiles could only guess was Latin.

He couldn’t say what exactly sparked his reaction, but, before Stiles could fully process what was even happening, instinct screamed in his mind, cutting through the static-y lethargy like a knife. Power was filling the air once more, but it was a different sort of power; while the first spell had been like a slow, creeping mist rolling through the air and wrapping them in immobility, this was violence and rage and possession building and sucking up all the oxygen like the rush of a fire.

There was nothing to guide him, nothing to see, no colorful lights or even silly hand gestures like in the movies, just feeling, just instinct, just one word shrieking through his mind: “No!”

His legs were moving of their own accord, sneakers digging into the soft ground as he flung himself forward. Stiles felt simultaneously as though he was racing at the speed of light and not moving at all. He wasn’t going to make it. His hand stretched out, fingers grasping at air. Until they weren’t, until they met soft cotton and hard muscle and it was like slamming into a brick wall, but Derek barely even moved. His whole body was locked stiff as though he’d been turned into stone and for an impossibly long, horrifying moment, Stiles was certain even the force of his whole body hadn’t been enough to budge Derek from being rooted in place. But then slowly, ever so slowly it seemed, Derek began to tilt and it was Stiles locked in place, watching as though through a long tunnel as Derek tilted away from him, crashing in slow motion to the ground.

He could still feel the faintest whisper of worn cotton against his fingertips and his mind was sending up a mental cheer when it hit. The only warning he got was an odd rushing in his ears, like all the air around him had been abruptly sucked away by a vacuum. Then it slammed into him with physical force, though there was nothing truly physical about it. His back arched and someone was screaming as the back of his head collided with the damp loam. It was him, he was screaming, he figured out eventually, but for a while he knew little else but pain.

It hurt, god it hurt. It was fire, first in his stomach, his chest, spreading out through his veins, burning him from the inside out, trying to force him out of his own body. He was writhing, with no control over his own muscles. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t blink, the obscenely blue sky spun above him; until everything whited out.

He lost track of reality, lost track of the woods and the sky and even the sound of his own screams. There was only the fire, the pain filling him, and in the wake of the fire came rage, rage and helplessness and self-loathing, but it wasn’t his. He knew that even as he felt it, spiraling not from the pit of his stomach like the emotions he knew all too well, but from higher in his chest, in his ribs, his lungs, his throat, filling him, choking him.

And with those feelings came thoughts, thoughts that weren’t him, experiences that weren’t his. A shrill voice ringing in his head. _‘Fat. Idiot. Waste of space.’_ He was angry, so angry he wanted to lash out, to fight, to hurt back but he couldn’t.

_He was in a dark room, hunched over a single candle with a heavy book balanced in his lap. He squinted at the words before him, tongue thick and clumsy as he stumbled through them. He was trying, trying so hard to make something, anything happen. After what felt like hours, the candle went out._

Stiles fought, mind and body rebelling against the invasion. He tried to set up a barrier between _him_ and _not him_ , tried to surround himself in the sound of his dad’s laugh and the smell of his mom’s perfume.

_They circled around him, painted in black and silver, garish, posers. They laughed, lashing out and shoving him without ever lifting a finger. He stumbled, trying to put up barriers against them, but they tore through his efforts like paper. ‘We’ll show you real power,’ they jeered._

Scott sprawled out on the couch next to him while they watched crappy horror movies. That time his dad took him to a baseball game and let him have so many hot dogs, he almost puked. The crowd roaring as he scored a goal in lacrosse.

_He lay in bed at night, staring up at the dark ceiling above him. He knew what was out there, he could feel it, the power just beyond his reach. He needed it. He would have it. All he needed was an anchor._

The strawberry scent of Lydia's hair, the sharp bite of her wit. The strength in Derek’s arms as he shoved Stiles’ against the wall. The menace in Derek’s growl, and the fondness underneath.

_No more stupid. No more ugly. No more helpless._

The sharp scent of Derek’s after shave, the hot puff of his breath.

_He would make them pay. Everyone that had made him feel worthless. They’d feel his power. Feel his wrath._

His dad... his mom... Scott...

Lydia... Derek...

Derek...

And then there was nothing. As suddenly as it had come, the fire was gone, leaving him hollowed out and empty. A cold began to seep into its place, sharp and bone deep. Like the creep of frozen, bony fingers and the glide of blind, slimy things that scurry away as soon as you shine the light on them. The cold spread through him, reversing the path of the fire as it started in his fingers and toes, crawling up his arms, his legs, into his chest, into his lungs, until finally it reached his head, numbing his mind. He could hear his heart like a drum in his ears, pounding away, struggling desperately against the cold that was sucking him down. It was losing, fading. He was falling.

A pulse of pain shot through him, making his body jerk and temporarily shoving back the cold. He blinked and blurry tree branches above him wavered dizzily. He might have been crying, but he couldn’t tell for sure.

_Power. Strength. Mine._

It didn’t last long and he was quickly falling again, the cold persistent, latching onto him. There was a battle going on inside of him, a battle between two forces that he couldn't control, that he could just barely scrape the edges of understanding. One was magic, he knew that; the spell that had hit him, the magic that was trying to consume him, burn him out of his own body. The other, the other was coldness, darkness, creeping through him more softly but pulling him away from his body all the same. He tried to fight, he tried so hard, though he hardly knew how, or which direction to turn. He fought against the fire, against the pain, against the cold. The forces were battling each other, with him caught in the crosshairs. He struggled, searching for something to ground him. 

Derek... Derek was here, so close; he couldn’t feel him or see him, but he knew Derek was there just out of reach. He wondered vaguely if Derek still couldn’t move, as another wave of pain briefly pushed back the numbness. He was reminded of laying on the floor of the police station, of listening to Derek’s breathing beside him, waiting helplessly with strained ears for the sound of gunfire, waiting to find out which of the people he cared about wouldn’t make it through the night. But it was different this time, different because now he knew he was the one who wouldn’t be making it. He was fighting it, through the pain and numbness, but he knew he wouldn’t win. It was like being pulled in two different directions, the numbness lulling him into a quiet haze of white while the pain hit sharp and dark, thrusting him closer and closer toward the precipice leading to a black void. He didn’t know which side would win out, but somehow he knew that either way when the battle was over he wouldn’t be there anymore.

The pain was becoming sharper, the pulses coming faster and stronger. Blackness grew and rose around him, behind his eyelids, and terror knotted in his chest. The blackness was going to suffocate him, he was going to drown in it, so he fought to push it back, to keep his eyes open though the glare of the sun hurt his eyes and everything was blurry and he wasn’t really aware anymore. It was a relief when something blocked out the sun, something hovering over his face, a far distant sound that wasn’t his own scream struggling to reach his ears. He strained toward it, reach desperately; but it was too late, the next wave of pain shut down everything, his nerve endings fried, his brain short circuited, and he was launched over the edge into the void that reached up to him with sticky fingers to pull him down, sucking him in.

The _ba-bump ba-bump_ in his ears became fainter, as though he’d left his heart at the top of the cliff. It slowed, _ba... bump ba...bump ba... ba... bump_ , until it stopped.

_Ba..._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Minor traumatic flashbacks.

________________________________________

Chapter 2  
________________________________________

So this was death. No angels, no pearly gates. Just darkness and an invisible hoard of drifting, formless spirits.

At first there had been a total absence sensation, leaving him neither warm nor cold, but as he felt the formless shapes draw in tighter around him a chill swept over him. They didn’t have bodies any more than he did, but all the same it was as though bony fingers were reaching for him, clutching at him, leaching what little warmth of life he had left. It was terrible, like icicle claws and sheets of frozen mist curling around him. And maybe he wasn’t completely done fighting, because he wanted to struggle against them, wanted to scream, to run away, but lacked the legs to do so. He was trapped.

The best he could do was try to shrink into himself, to curl away from the grasping fingers, and pray. Pray that there was someplace, some _thing_ , else out there, something better than this. This wasn't right, some instinct in him screamed, he shouldn't be here. It wasn't peaceful anymore, it was dark and terrifying and wrong.

Except suddenly it wasn't so dark anymore. A low light began pulse, pushing the darkness away. It didn’t illuminate anything, since there was nothing to illuminate; it was just light, faint at first but growing, brightening. The light was soft, alluring, and he wanted to move closer to it. But he couldn't, there was nothing to move too; the light was coming from him. With each pulse it grew stronger and a buzz of energy began to fill him, hot and vibrant, like lightening coursing through his non-existent veins.

It was a different sort of lightening though; made not of pain but warmth. It grew until it filled him, spread out from him, forcing the darkness to give way. As the light surrounded him, sound began to filter in as well, a slow thumping sounding in his ears. It was off somehow though, wrong in a way that made him want to claw through the glow to reach its source and fix it. Smell hit him too, filling him with the scent of pine and fur, fresh snow and old blood.

The shadows around him shrieked, though it wasn’t so much a sound as a vibration slamming against him. They rushed at him with more fervor than before, more and more of them until he was drowning. They were all around him, crushing, clinging to his edges and clawing inside of him. He struggled, flailing, desperate to break free. He opened his mouth to scream, but they merely dug their way deeper inside of him. They were filling him up, ripping at his insides and tearing him apart, but the glow continued to brighten, chasing away the darkness until he was consumed with fire.

He reached for the light, trying to draw it and the sound and the smell around him and use them to rebuild himself. But at the same time the shadows were pressing closer, clinging to him, trying to leach away the light. They reached for him, cold tendrils clasping, clawing. His struggles were futile, his screams silent, and he was losing himself, de-fabricating bit by bit until there was only light.  
________________________________________

He couldn’t see. A dull orange glow filled his perception; sunlight through eyelids. But he didn’t need to see, not with his eyes. He was aware of everything; every pulse, every beat, every single one of the trillions of threads that connected everyone and everything in the world together.

He was in the back of his Jeep, he knew, lying with his legs bent up at an awkward angle, facing the back of the rear seat. Behind him were people, his people, his pack. One sat just behind him, on the back bumper of the Jeep facing outward; the other two stood in a loose semi-circle around the bumper facing in. No one spoke, but no one needed to. Stiles could feel them, their grief, their rage, their emptiness and confusion. It wasn’t right, it made him hurt like a fist full of nails being dragged through his gut; he had to fix it.

The one sitting beside him, that was the worst. He smelled of blood, his energy was wrong, sick. That wasn’t okay. Stiles couldn’t let his people hurt.

He reached out, out to the hurting, trying to soothe it. His limbs were awkward, rubbery and clumsy and he was barely even aware of them but he felt the warmth of skin through fabric when his hand made contact. It didn’t take much, just a small current of energy from the palm of his hand into the other, a gentle balm to wash away the hurt and heal the broken and everything was alright again.

There was a shriek. It was loud, hurting his ears. They felt raw, new, as though he’d just been created, or recreated, he wasn’t sure. The floor beneath him shifted and lurched as the other yanked away from him, scrambling away across the ground. He didn’t like that, he wanted his people close, safe.

His body protested as he sat, stiff and unwieldy. His eyes opened, though it was slow, difficult, and they felt rough like sandpaper. He blinked at them, his people. They were beautiful, and he didn’t mean just their faces. He saw beneath the skin, the flesh and bone that made them human, even beneath the animal that lurked just under the human veneer. He saw _them_ , saw their true selves. They were scarred, yes, some more than others, twisted in ways that made him want to cry, but they were his, and they were beautiful.

They were talking, a babble of voices and noise around him but he could decipher no meaning yet. One was speaking the loudest, nearly shouting really in a voice high and shrill; it was the one who’d been hurt - Isaac, his mind supplied distantly. It was all coming back to him now, slowly creeping through his mind, details, names, places. All the pieces of a life, of the life that had been his.

“It touched me! The corpse touched me!”

Suddenly pain hit him, hard and sharp, as though someone had reached into his chest, thrusting a fist through his ribs and given his heart a hard, unforgiving squeeze. He cried out, falling back against the scratchy carpet of the Jeep floor, clutching his chest. It hurt, god it hurt, too fast and too hard pounding at his chest, trying to escape him.

Then his lungs were screaming too, and he was choking. He opened his mouth, gasping desperately, but each breath he tried to take was like swallowing ice. His body was fighting, flailing, flopping around like a fish out of water that if he’d been aware of at the time would have left him cringing in embarrassment for life.

His vision was blurred with tears, mouth gaping as he fought both to cry out and gasp for air at the same time, hands clutching futilely at the floor beneath him. But then there was something warm, so warm on his chest, pressing him down, holding him still. A sob caught in his throat and he tried to curl toward the warmth, clinging to it as it spread and his body calmed.

When at last he had regained control of himself, he didn’t move for a long time, afraid of setting off whatever that had been again. Slowly, so slowly, he blinked his eyes open, only to find himself face to, well, crotch with Derek Hale. He choked a little when he realized that, pulling himself back with shaky arms.

Derek, who had been kneeling half beside him, half on top of him, pulled back as soon as he was sure Stiles was back in control. He retreated from the Jeep entirely, moving back to stand a few feet away with the others.

Stiles’ head spun dizzily and he felt bizarrely disconnected with his skin, as though he didn’t fit in it quite right anymore; it was too tight, stretched over his bones like rubber cement. On impulse, he touched his own arm, just to be sure it was real. It was, though it still felt just as weird. Only partially reassured, he decided to stop focusing so much on himself.

His friends were much more interesting. Isaac was sprawled on the ground with his back pressed up against Scott’s legs, his eyes wide with alarm and breathing shallow. Derek stood beside Scott, face a pale, ashen grey. They were all staring at him. Staring at him like he’d grown a second, and then third head.

“Okay, who gave me acid?” he joked weakly, only realizing as the sound of his own voice echoed back to his ears how hoarse and unlike himself it sounded. No one moved or spoke, they just kept staring, and, after a moment, Stiles self-consciously reached up to touch his own neck, just to be sure he really hadn’t grown a second and third head. “Guys, seriously?” he tried again, beginning to freak out just a little. “What’s going on?”

All at once, Scott moved, rushing forward until his face was pressed into Stiles’ collarbone and his arms were a vice-like grip around Stiles’ painfully sore ribs. And he was crying, Scott was literally crying into his shoulder. Awkwardly, Stiles hugged his best friend back, fisting his hands in the back of Scott’s shirt. “Hey dude, nice to see you too,” he greeted quietly, feeling Scott tremble against him just a little.

He felt Scott’s muffled laugh against his shoulder before his best friend pulled away, wiping his eyes quickly. “That wasn’t funny, dude,” he complained.

Stiles blinked, tilting his head. “What wasn’t?”

They all stared at him, and he stared back, until Isaac broke the silence. “You’re kidding, right?” He finally closed his mouth, wiping it self-consciously and standing stiffly in an attempt to regain his dignity.

“I realize that it might be hard to tell sometimes, but no, I’m not,” he clarified, looking around at all of them. “What happened?”

There was a long, awkward silence, which this time Derek broke, his voice stiff and distant. “You died.”

Stiles stared, heart still pounding in his chest like it was trying to break free and - oh. His heart, that pain in his chest, it was his heart. His heart beating. His heart, which hadn’t been beating. His heart which he’d just literally felt restart. Oh.

“That’s... That’s not...” he fumbled, “If any of you kissed me, I swear-”

“You were dead for like over an hour, Stiles,” Scott cut him off, giving him those big puppy eyes of utter sincerity.

Stiles just sat back, head thumping carelessly against the rear of the back seat. “I don’t understand,” he mumbled. All of them looked serious, really serious, and it was scaring him. And really, why? Okay, maybe he’d died, but he was fine now, right? So no harm, no foul. Okay, no, not at all. But it was easier to focus on them than on the fact that five minutes ago he hadn’t had a pulse.

He looked down at himself; he looked the same. Same pale, scrawny arms, same freckles, same him. His shirt was dirty, streaked with mud and leaves, and there was a hole in it. A great big hole, right over his shoulder, with a little bit of what looked suspiciously like blood staining the edges of the fabric.

He looked up sharply, eyes narrowed at Derek, who was very carefully glaring a hole into the grass at his feet.

“Did you bite me?” Stiles accused.

Derek glanced up, jaw set, but didn’t say anything. It was all the confirmation Stiles needed.

His insides churned with rage and confusion and relief and terror and a whole lot of other things he couldn’t - or didn’t really want to - identify. He opened his mouth, ready to send one hell of a tirade Derek’s way, but then he closed his mouth again and repeated the process a few more times with nothing coming out. It wasn’t until he noticed Scott’s concerned gaze locking on his hands that he realized they were shaking violently. His whole body was shaking, actually, and his lungs still felt like they were filled with ice. His teeth were chattering too; he hadn’t noticed.

“We should...” Scott started, but then failed, glancing to Derek uncertainly.

“We can’t take him to the hospital,” Isaac interjected when Derek didn’t answer, “There isn’t exactly a standard treatment for post-death.”

“So what do we do?” There was helplessness, fear, and just a hint of anger in Scott’s voice.

“We keep him warm. Keep an eye on him, make sure there aren’t any... complications,” Derek answered, voice that low growl he used when he was wearing his big boy alpha pants, though he still wasn’t look at Stiles.

Stiles had stopped paying attention to them. He was focused on his hand; slowly, methodically clenching and releasing his fist, he watched as the muscles moved and tendons flexed. Funny, he’d never really stopped to _look_ at his hand before, to notice the fine veins just visible underneath pale skin and freckles, to study the way his whole arm had to move, and he could feel the tightening all the way up into his neck when his clenched his fist. He’d never really stopped to think about how _every_ part of his body was alive in some way. It was interesting, and it was also serving as a distraction, one that was successfully lessening his shaking and helping to even out his pulse.

Once the initial wave of panic and confusion and rage passed, he was left simply exhausted; not just tired, but that soul-crushing, bone deep utter exhaustion that just made him want to curl up and sleep for days. So that’s exactly what he decided to do.

The others were still talking around him. He didn’t know, or care, what about, he just interrupted. “I want to go home,” he stated, his own voice ringing a little too loudly in his ears.

Everyone stopped and looked at him. Scott and Derek both started to speak at the same time, disturbingly identical frowns on their faces.

“I’m going home,” Stiles restated more firmly before they had the chance to refuse him, “with or without someone to drive me there.” He wasn’t stupid, he knew he wasn’t up to driving just yet. He didn’t wait for a response though. He stopped paying attention to them and focused instead on getting his stiff body to climb carefully out of the back of the Jeep, without falling down on the way - a narrow miss - and limping his way around to the passenger seat. He ignored their stares, ignored Scott’s half-aborted gestures to help him and the way Derek started to bare his teeth before biting back the urge to order Stiles to stay. When he made it to the passenger seat, he sank into it and closed his eyes, ready to take a nap right then and there. Scott would follow him, he knew it. He knew it the way he knew Scott’s password was still ‘Allison’ and that he still had a Backstreet Boys CD hidden under his bed; because it was Scott.

Sure enough, a few minutes later the driver’s side door opened and Scott slid into the seat; he knew it was Scott because he made that little ‘umph’ sound when he stepped up into the Jeep. Neither of them said a word the whole way back to Stiles’ house. Usually that would have driven Stiles crazy, though silence was more comfortable with Scott than with other people, but for once he was just too tired to care. He stayed hunched down in the passenger seat, forehead leaning against the cool glass of the window. Scott had the heat on full blast, and Stiles' skin felt tight and feverish. But at the same time his hands were still shaking where he had them clenched in his lap and it felt like his lungs were clogged with icicles every time he took a breath.

He must have dozed off at some point because all too soon Scott was hoisting him out of the seat and guiding him up the stairs, and he had definitely missed something in between there. As soon as Scott released him, Stiles collapsed into bed in his best undignified sprawl of limbs. He paused that way for a moment, glorying in existence of his bed before he rolled around enough to squirm out of his filthy jeans and under the blanket.

“Go away, Scott,” he grumbled into his pillow without bothering to look; he could _feel_ Scott hovering. “You’d better not still be here when I wake up. ‘M fine.”

Whatever Scott might have said in returned, Stiles didn’t hear. He was already floating away into blissful unconsciousness.  
________________________________________  
 _-he’s running, running so fast and so hard that the dirt kicks up under his heels. He’s on all fours, limbs moving in a way that is at once familiar and foreign. He doesn’t even remember-_

_-he’s angry. He’s so angry-_

_-his mouth tastes like ash. He doesn’t remember what anything else tastes like anymore-_

_-there’s screaming. He spins desperately; who is screaming?-_

He woke with that cotton-filled-mouth-hit-by-a-truck-what-century-is-it? feeling and a vague, lingering sense of horror. He couldn’t say what had woken him, but he didn’t move right away, just lying there staring at the familiar shadows on his ceiling. He was breathing a little too fast, like he’d been running or holding his breath for too long, and when he finally did move, his whole body protested sharply and made him instantly regret it.

He forced himself to roll out of bed anyway, staggering his way into the bathroom. Once there, he peeled off his t-shirt and shorts; thankfully, there wasn’t a whole lot of blood, but they were stiff with dirt and sweat. The hot spray of water beating into the sore muscles of his back felt so good, he moaned aloud, closing his eyes to bask in it.

Stiles let the water wash over him, let it rinse away the dirt and the cold that still clung to him like the grasp of desperate fingers. He took a long time, turning his face up toward the flow of water, eyes closed, and just breathing. He’d never really stopped to think about how incredible breathing was before, but it was in fact pretty nice; the slight drag of air entering his nostrils, the sweet way the oxygen filled his lungs and made his chest expand, the soft sound of the carbon dioxide leaving his body. It felt good.

It wasn’t like being stuck in darkness, the air heavy and thick with shadows. It wasn’t pressing down on him, choking him, drowning him. He couldn’t move, couldn’t fight it, every breathing drawing the darkness deeper and deeper into himself-

His eyes snapped open, chest heaving. His fingers were digging into the tiny grooves between the tiles on the shower wall, his nose squashed against the smooth, cool surface. The hot water had run out, and he was shivering, goose bumps spreading across his skin as the steam dissipated. He stayed that way for a minute longer before he made his arms flex and push him away from the wall. He turned off the water, grabbing his towel hastily.

He meant to hurry out of the bathroom, meant to put the whole thing from his mind and find something normal to focus on. But then he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and it made him stop. He faced his reflection, his face, his gangly limbs and lean chest. He touched his shoulder where the holes in his shirt had been, where Derek's teeth had pierced his skin and... contaminated him? Infected him? How did the whole werewolf thing even work anyway? Was it like some virus that was transferred through saliva? Was there some kind of venom in the alpha's fangs? Would there be some anomaly to be found if they did some sort of blood test? Or was it just magic, unexplainable and scientifically unidentifiable? A vague curiosity tickled the back of his brain. Maybe someday he'd want to know bad enough to find out, but just then he was too tired and too numb.

He looked... the same as he always did. A little paler than usual, maybe. There was no scar, no mark of any kind left to look at, no visual to prove how drastically his life had changed. He knew better than to expect he'd look different; Scott's appearance hadn't changed, except for when his wolfy side came out and he actually shifted. But it made something inside of Stiles twitch and squirm when he thought about it. He'd changed, irreparably, that day. He'd died, and come back to life, and joined the occasionally furry club whether he liked it or not.

Inside, he barely even felt like himself anymore. But outside, he was exactly the same. For now. Until the full moon. Until he started shifting and trying to eat people. He shook that thought off quickly. He didn’t want to think about it anymore, so didn’t let himself. He turned away from the mirror quickly, movements quick and determined. He dried off and dug through his clothes until he found a semi-clean pair of shorts and t-shirt to put on. 

Okay, so he’d had a small traumatic flashback. Of course he had, he’d died today, it was perfectly natural. He’d get over it. It wasn’t like he hadn’t dealt with trauma before. So he pushed it back, pushed back the memory of darkness and cold and grasping phantom fingers, hiding it behind the English essay he needed to write. Then he pushed back thoughts of werewolves, and the full moon, and the rest of his troubling, suddenly uncertain future and stuck it behind the loads of laundry he needed to do and how long it had been since he’d been to the grocery. Normalcy, that’s what he needed.

The whole day had taken on a sort of fuzzy, dream-like quality and his sense of time was completely skewed. But he had a vague recollection of late afternoon light creeping in around his curtains when Scott had brought him home and now his room had the deep shadows of night time. All things considered, it shouldn’t have been surprising to realize he was ravenously hungry; if it was really as late as he thought it was, he’d missed dinner; and they’d never gotten to eating the picnic he’d prepared earlier, which meant that it had been at least twelve hours since he’d eaten last. But it did surprise him. He hadn’t even noticed the hollow ache in his stomach until he started thinking about it, and even then it felt weirdly detached, like it wasn’t really _him_ feeling it.

He shoved those thoughts aside however and focused on the main point: food. Food was important, food was normal, yes food was exactly what he needed.

He had enough presence of mind to employ some degree of stealth as he came down the stairs, since he hadn’t bothered to look at the clock and had no idea if his dad was asleep or not. His efforts were unnecessary, however, as he noticed the dining room light still on, where his dad was no doubt pouring over a pile of paperwork regardless of the hour. It wasn’t unusual, far from it, but it made him pause, one foot dangling over the last step. The enormity and absurdity of just everything hit him at all once; he had _died_ a few hours ago, and like so many things in his life lately, his dad had no idea. His dad was sitting in there doing normal things, like a normal person on a normal day.

After a moment, he lowered his foot and started moving again, following his originally intended path into the kitchen. Whatever minimal enthusiasm he managed to muster over the idea of food was gone. The rumbling of hunger was replaced by a dull, leaden weight that made, not just his stomach, but his whole chest feel hollow. He continued through the motions anyway, and after a brief search and he dug out some leftover lasagna. Lasagna was a staple in their house, since it was pretty much the only thing either he or his dad really knew how to cook. He dumped some onto a plate to microwave numbly, barely even aware of the automatic action.

He wolfed down his first and second piece of lasagna, leaning over the counter with the plate held up close to his face as he shoveled the food into his mouth. Once he started, his ravenous hunger took over and he ate so fast he barely remembered the food passing his lips. But, after the first two pieces, the desperate need for sustenance started to abate. While he waited for his third piece to heat up, his eyes strayed toward the dining room. Through the doorway, he could just see his dad’s back and the rounded hunch of his shoulders as he bent over the files spread across the table in front of him. It was a familiar sight, accompanied by the quiet scritch-scratch of pencil on paper and the slight rustle of crime scene photos.

A low ache started up in the pit of Stiles’ stomach, one that had nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with what he could only identify as homesickness, which was silly really, he was home, wasn’t he? This was his house, his kitchen, his dad, this was home, this was here he belonged. But he felt itchy and restless and cramped, like trying to wear one of his old school shirts from elementary school; and even though there were really only a few feet separating them, his dad felt so very far away.

Stiles took his plate into the dining room with him, moving behind the sheriff so that he could loom over his shoulder. “Wha’cha doing?” he asked, unnecessarily. His own voice sounded odd in his ears, ringing hollow and too high with false cheerfulness.

His dad seemed unfazed however, and didn’t even look up as he answered dryly, “Work.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, stuffing another bite of lasagna in his mouth. “I can see that,” he huffed.

“Well then, why’d you ask?” his dad retorted irritably.

Stiles pulled back, stuffing another bite in his mouth rather than try to answer. Silence filled the room, punctuated only by the sound of his dad moving papers around and his own chewing. It grated on him, and he only lasted a few minutes before he tried again.

“Scott borrowed the Jeep,” he started, assuming that Scott probably had driven it home after dropping him off, it wouldn’t be the first time. “He, uh, had a thing.” He winced a little internally even as he said it, but nothing else had come to mind.

The sheriff only grunted absently in acknowledgement.

“We went out to the woods today,” he forged on, mouth running away from him as it so often did. “A little hiking, fresh air, you know. Isaac came too; he’s got like a really big platonic boner for Scott or something, so he’s been... hanging around...” He trailed off lamely. Stiles didn't mention Derek. He still hadn't figured out a way to explain his weird sort-of friendship with Derek to his dad, without explaining the whole werewolf thing anyway. So Stiles mainly just avoided mentioning Derek, ever. It was easier than it should have been, considering how much time Stiles had been spending with Derek lately, and he really didn't want to think through the implications of what that meant about the state of his relationship with his dad.

His dad started making notes on a file.

“It was pretty great, up until I died.” He didn’t know why he said it, and he regretted it immediately. He didn’t always have complete control of his mouth, and sometimes words felt more like vomit just spilling out of him whether he liked it or not.

The next minute felt like an hour, the silence expanding like a physical thing filling the room and making Stiles twitchy. Finally, his dad put down the pen and looked up.

“That isn’t funny,” he deadpanned, “You know I was listening.”

Stiles’ stomach plummeted like a punctured balloon, and a part of him couldn’t tell if it was disappointment or relief. It was sort of funny, in a not at all funny kind of way, that the first serious truth he’d told his dad in months and he didn’t believe him. That probably said a lot about his life. He didn’t really want to bring his dad into the all the crazy shit that his life involved these days. At the same time, it was hard; all the lying and deceit and manipulation, all the things he wanted so bad to say, to get his dad’s advice on. It was exhausting, and lonely.

But his dad was probably better off not knowing. So he dropped his eyes and hunched his shoulders, looking down at his half finished piece of lasagna; suddenly he wasn’t hungry anymore. “You’re right,” he mumbled, “Sorry. I’m just... tired. I’m going back to bed.”

He didn’t really give his dad time to respond, just dumped his plate in the sink and headed back upstairs. The sheriff called a faint, “Night,” after him, but didn’t stop him.

He did stop, briefly, as he passed the window at the top of the stairs. There was a strange, somehow familiar prickling at the base of his neck, one that made him glance out at the moon-washed street outside. He didn't seen anything, or anyone, but the lingering sense that he wasn't alone remained; that there was a familiar presence lurking somewhere out there in the darkness, watching him. Maybe he should have found it creepy. But then again, given the circumstance maybe he should have found it comforting. As it was, he couldn't quite bring himself to care either way. So he shrugged it off without another thought.

When he reached his room, he just flopped face first onto his bed and decided to never move again.


	3. Chapter 3

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Chapter 3  
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Somehow, he’d been so focused on what had happened, that he hadn't really thought about what was now _going_ to happen; not until he climbed into the Jeep the next morning to greet the frowny, scrunched up face Scott usually reserved for when he was bracing himself for an attack or some sort of serious conversation about feelings.

“You okay, dude?” Stiles prompted after a minute when Scott didn’t move to even turn the car on, let alone start driving.

“Are you?” he retorted.

“Yeah. You know the whole driving thing usually works better if you turn the car on; come on, we’re going to be late.” He felt... well, surprisingly good. After the disastrous non-conversation with his dad the night before, he’d slept like a log, or the dead; a dead log. And when he’d woken up that morning he had more energy than he remembered having in a very long time. He couldn’t explain it and had settled for just not thinking about it too hard, better to just roll with it.

But Scott didn’t look convinced. “Really?” he asked skeptically, “Just fine? No mood swings? No nightmares? No homicidal urges?”

He shrugged, “No more than usual.” He actually didn’t remember dreaming the night before, though he did have a lingering sense of claustrophobic emptiness that he tried hard not to think about. And as for homicidal urges, he’d never really been a violent person; of course, neither had Scott before he’d been bitten.

The truth of the matter was, it didn’t feel real. It wasn’t exactly that he’d forgotten about it, something like this was a little hard to forget. But he didn’t really feel any different, and by the time he’d woken - come back to life - there’d been no bite left to see, only the holes in his shirt and the guilt on Derek’s face. So while he _knew_ this was something he was going to have to face, it didn’t seem like something he really had to deal with immediately.

Scott didn’t look convinced, but at least he let the matter drop for the time being.

The day passed in a blur, for which Stiles was mostly grateful. A persistent, nagging feeling of being out of sync trailed him all day, like watching a video with the sound just a second or two off; everything in his life had changed, and yet, at the same time, everything was exactly the same.

He had trouble concentrating on anything, not that that was unusual for him, but worse than usual. The hallways seemed more crowded, as though the student population had somehow multiplied over night. The sounds of their conversations echoed, far too loud, though he found it nearly impossible to focus in on what anyone was actually saying. It was all just a constant, deafening rush of noise pressing against his ears and threatening to drown him. He caught himself spacing out in class; he’d be halfway through writing a sentence in his notes, only to blink and realize that somehow they’d moved on to an entirely different topic without his noticing. It was disconcerting, and lunch came as a relief.

He knew as soon as he saw them that the pack knew everything. They were sitting together when he entered the cafeteria at lunch, Erica and Isaac with their heads bent together, no doubt planning something evil and/or terrifying based on their expression. Boyd appeared to be focused on his lunch, sitting next to Erica, but there was a stiffness to his shoulders and the way he kept glancing around the cafeteria almost compulsively. Scott seemed to be alternating between trying to stare his mashed potatoes into submission and listening in on Erica and Isaac’s conversation. Even Lydia was picking at her nails in a nervous sort of way from her place in Jackson’s lap; only Jackson looked basically unaffected. 

There was a sharp edge to the air around them, and they all looked up simultaneously when he entered, which was pretty creepy, even though Stiles knew they had probably just all caught his scent at the same time. He didn’t really know why he hesitated. They’d pretty much all been sitting together since the beginning of the school year, since they’d really started to become a pack, even if Scott still denied being a part of it; and Stiles sat with them, werewolf or not.

But maybe that was just it; he wasn’t human anymore. It hit him all over again and brought him up short. He actually, legitimately belonged at that table now. He was no longer just Scott’s friend, no longer the pesky human that just wouldn’t go away. He was pack.

He wasn’t quite sure what to do with that revelation. He still didn’t feel any more like pack than he had before. Derek talked about it like there was some mystical bond involved, some instinctual connection that the inner wolf responded to; of course Derek talked about pack like it was something holy. To be fair, he didn’t know what it meant to feel like pack, but whatever it was supposed to feel like he was pretty sure it wasn’t this, this restlessness.

He didn’t run out of the cafeteria, but he did walk very quickly. He ended up in the gym behind the bleachers. It was quiet there, and he was alone. He sat with his back against the wall, staring up at the undersides of the seats and wondering if they’d ever managed to get out all of that janitor’s blood.

When the bell rang to signal the end of lunch, he didn’t move.

________________________________________

When the final bell rang, he by passed his locker, knowing Scott would be waiting for him. He ignored his phone too, though he’d already seen the text from Derek that read _3 o’clock_ , Derek’s incredibly eloquent method of calling a pack meeting. He had every intention of ignoring that too.

He wound up in the cemetery. He hadn’t exactly meant to, but he hadn’t exactly had any destination in mind when he’d started driving either; somehow, he wasn’t really surprised.

He trooped his way slowly through the maze of headstones, walking carefully between them in an old but well familiar path. He only ever came to the cemetery for one reason, one headstone he always headed right for.

“Hey mom,” he mumbled when he reached it. He brushed away the leaves that obscured her name, the headstone one of those simple, modern ones set in the ground. He sat down in the soft grass and crossed his legs, sitting facing the stone as though he was facing her. “Sorry I haven’t been around lately.” Almost a year, actually. He felt bad, but he really just hadn’t had time; he told himself she’d have understood.

The graveyard was empty except for him and an old man who stood by the gate, seemingly staring away at nothing. He traced the rough edges of her grave marker, letting the hard corners dig a little into his fingertips. There were so many things he wanted to tell her, about Scott and the pack, about Derek, about his dad and how he just didn’t know how to talk to him anymore. He used to come here all the time and just sit for hours, telling her all about Scott, and Lydia, and lacrosse, and everything else going on in his life.

But for once, no words came. It had never felt silly before, but suddenly it was starting to. It wasn’t like his mom was going to talk back, or offer him any advice, or even just give him a hug; god he missed her hugs. No good was going to come of sitting around talking to himself in front of a piece of stone.

And yet, he didn’t leave. He just sat there, tracing the shape of the headstone and losing track of time. If nothing else, the silence in the graveyard was peaceful, giving him a sense of restfulness that had been missing everywhere else lately.

When he finally did stir, long late afternoon shadows were creeping between the headstones and his stomach was reminding him that, since he’d forgotten to eat lunch, again, it was past time to eat.

On his way out of the cemetery, wrapped up in thoughts about stopping by the grocery store on the way home and trying to remember what all they needed, he was intercepted by an old man.

“Excuse me,” the man said politely. He looked like one expected a grandfather to look, though Stiles had never met either of his; with wispy white hair and a wrinkly face, he wore a pair of slacks and a frankly hideous cable knit sweater that looked too large for his scrawny, bent frame. “Have you seen my wife?”

Stiles blinked, thrown by the unexpected interruption. He took a reflexive glance around, but there was no one else in the graveyard except the two off them. “No, sorry,” he answered, already starting to walk away.

“She promised she’d come...” he just heard the old man mutter behind him.

________________________________________

By the time he got through buying the groceries, got home, put them away, and fixed himself some dinner, it was after dark. His dad was working late, again, so the house was empty and quiet. He flipped through the newspaper his dad had left on the table absently while he ate; the only article even close to interesting was one on the dangers of teen drinking under a massive picture of a pretty girl who’d been a freshman at a nearby university before she’d died in an alcohol related accident. It was tragic, but did little to live up to his dad’s more vivid lectures on the subject.

Once he’d cleaned up the remains of his dinner, he headed to his bedroom, dragging his feet, to face the homework that he’d been letting pile up. He dumped his backpack on the bed, flicking on his bedside lamp, and nearly jumped out of his skin at the sight of Derek sitting in his desk chair.

“God,” he complained, drawing out the ‘o’, “Do you even know how to use the door like a normal person?”

“You missed the meeting,” Derek ignored his exclamation, voice as deadpan and growly as usual.

“Yeah, I’m aware.” Stiles rolled his eyes, opening the zipper on his backpack with more force than necessary and beginning to pull out the textbooks he’d need. “I’ve been home for like forty minutes, dude, what were you doing, just sitting here waiting to be dramatic?”

He saw the movement in his peripheral vision, barely, but he didn’t really register it until Derek was just sort of there, looming over him; something that was surprisingly easy for Derek to do considering he was only a few inches taller than Stiles. “This isn’t funny,” he snapped.

“So people keep telling me,” Stiles grumbled. “But you’re right, it isn’t funny. There is absolutely nothing about this situation that’s funny. And whose fault is that?” He shot an accusatory glare Derek’s way, the anger that had been lurking as a slow simmer in the back of his mind suddenly bubbling over.

“You’re kidding me.” Derek blinked. He didn’t actually move, but he did seem to somehow diminish from looming back to normal proportions, looking genuinely taken aback. “What was I supposed to do, just let you die?”

“You knew that I never wanted this!” He wasn’t shouting, not quite, not yet. “I looked you in the eye and told you that I wanted to stay human.”

“This wasn’t some casual offer for you to officially join the pack, Stiles!” Derek was shouting, the low animal rumble that usually sent a shiver down Stiles’ spine underneath his words, making his stomach twist in a complicated way that at some point had stopped being fear and become something much more confusing. “You were _dying_ , I wasn’t about to just sit back and watch!”

“Dead,” he corrected, his own voice so loud that the single word rang painfully in his ears and made Derek stop short. “I wasn’t dying, I was dead.”

That word hung between them, harsh and painful and all too real. Derek took a step back, dropped his gaze if only for a second, the muscle in his jaw twitching. There was guilt in that movement, and a discomfort that spoke of something else that neither of them were fully ready to recognize. If Stiles hadn't been so pissed off, he might have acknowledged the little ache that twisted in his heart at Derek's expression. He'd seen so many expressions on Derek's face over the past few months, but mostly guilt and anger and fear; suddenly he wondered what delight, or true humor, might look like.

“You knew it,” Stiles continued, pushing his brain back onto the conversation at hand. His voice was quiet now, anger not gone but faded back to the back of his mind, under layers of numb exhaustion. “I was already dead when you bit me, wasn’t I? There would have been more blood if I wasn’t. And you knew it, you heard my heart stop and you bit me anyway.”

“I didn’t know it would work,” Derek admitted, the words forced out through grit teeth, “It took so long... I didn’t think it had worked.”

“So why do it?” The question slipped out, as usual his brain-to-mouth filter not working well. But he did want to know; Derek was still a mystery to him. Whenever he thought he was starting to figure the guy out, Derek would always go and do something else unfathomable.

Derek just looked at him, with that by now well familiar how-big-of-an-idiot-are-you? look that he treated Stiles to so often; but there was something different to it this time, something in the thin press of his lips and the little crease between his eyebrows that were suspiciously close to I’m-not-going-to-dignify-that-with-an-answer and I-will-never-understand-how-your-brain-works. Usually Stiles brushed off those expressions as Derek being an ass, but this time it sort of made him wonder if he really had missed something.

Derek didn’t answer. After a long minute of silence, his gaze shifted away to the window and back again; the closest Derek ever got to fidgeting. “The full moon is in less than a week,” he deflected. “We need to start your training, start working on your control.”

Stiles knew he was right, knew how important it was, he just didn’t like it. “My control seems fine so far,” he pointed out. His burst of anger had dissipated, but not faded entirely. It was still there, bubbling away at the back of his mind like a low, constant buzz.

“It won’t stay that way.” Derek shook his head. “The closer to the full moon it gets, the more dangerous it will be.”

Stiles knew that too and he sighed, shoulders dropping. “Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled, “I won’t miss another meeting. Sorry.” He turned back to the bed, cramming his books back into his bag; he had bigger things to stress over than studying, it could wait.

With his back to Derek, Stiles couldn’t see him; couldn’t see the expression on his face or the aborted hand gesture that might have been Derek reaching out to him. But he felt them. He couldn’t explain it, and was pretty sure it was some stupid trick of his imagination, but the muscles in his shoulder twitched as though expecting to feel Derek’s hand. No touch ever came, but his stomach twisted all the same.

As far as Stiles was concerned, the conversation was over; anything more he said would probably only make them both feel worse, and now that his anger had receded again, all he felt was exhaustion. But Derek didn’t seem to be leaving. He was still there, glaring holes into Stiles’ carpet and filling up the room with the force of his presence. The silence was beginning to weigh heavily on Stiles.

“So what happened with that guy?” he deflected, something that hadn’t been bothering him until earlier that afternoon. In the wake of the whole dying and being bitten thing, he’d sort of forgotten the man who had started it all. “And what was that... stuff.” He gestured vaguely. “Magic or something?”

“The witch got away.” Derek’s voice held a little more than his usual menace, bordering on a growl.

“Witch? Seriously, that guy?” Derek just raised an eyebrow at him. Okay, so Stiles knew that Hollywood got things wrong, they’d been pretty far off with werewolves after all, and it wasn’t like the movies were even consistent about it. But it had been one thing to reconcile the old, warty witches presented to him in his childhood with the sexier, corset wearing ones he started seeing more of as he got older; it was another thing entirely to accept an overweight, pimply nerd fresh from his mom’s basement.

“Okay, so what was he doing? I mean, it was probably him that left the trap Isaac got caught in, right?” Stiles pressed.

Derek nodded, but didn’t offer anything further. The deep line between his eyebrows was back and his frown was more intense than usual; he looked... perturbed.

“Have you, uh, dealt with witches much?” he asked, discomfited by Derek’s expression. “How much do you know about them?”

“I know enough to know that a witch, a _real_ witch, is bad news for anyone around them.”

“Great, just what we need,” Stiles muttered, running a hand distractedly through his hair. “So what now? I mean, we can’t just forget it, can we? Not if he’s dangerous.”

Derek shook his head. “I went back last night, but I couldn’t pick up his scent. He probably used magic to cover it.”

“This is crazy, you realize that right?” Stiles complained, flopping back onto his bed. He was just so tired. “Next you’ll be telling me my neighbor is a vampire or something.”

Derek pulled a long suffering face, “There’s no such thing as vampires.”

“Don’t jinx it.” He pointed an accusatory finger at the werewolf. “Now what do we do about the he-witch?”

Derek flexed, rolling his shoulders and didn’t answer, which by now Stiles had figured out was the Derek version of a silent ‘I don’t know’.

“You think the Argents know something about this?” Stiles offered, for lack of anything better. His stomach twisted uncomfortably, “You don’t think they had anything to do with it, do you?”

He shook his head. “They were sincere when they said they wanted a truce. Besides, as far as most hunters are concerned, witches are just as bad as werewolves; usually worse.”

“Wouldn’t hurt to ask though,” Stiles pointed out, chewing his lip distractedly. “They still might know something we don’t.”

“Just be careful what you tell them, even Allison. Especially Allison,” Derek warned him darkly. “They may not be hunting anymore, but they still won’t be happy about you joining the pack.”

“Yeah well, they can join the club,” Stiles muttered.

________________________________________

So the next day, he found himself on the Argents’ doorstep, facing down Chris Argent, and innocently asking if Allison was home. His excuse was a cliché, but an honest one; he needed to borrow some calc notes. He had skipped half of his classes the day before, after all.

Chris gave him that appraising, skeptical look that made Stiles feel a little bit like he was being dissected, but let him in. “She’s in her room, go on up.”

He muttered a hasty thanks and scrambled up the stairs. As he approached Allison’s room, he heard the unmistakable strains of “As Long As You Love Me” and couldn’t help but smirk a little. Her expression of surprise when she opened her door was even better.

Outwardly, she looked pretty much the same, but Stiles could see still see how much the past year had changed her. He hadn’t seen a lot of her lately, since his social circle pretty much exclusively consisted of werewolves these days. During the summer, she and her dad had gone off on some father-daughter bonding trip, and had formally made a truce with Derek when they got back. True to her word, Allison just more or less stayed away from the pack during school. But she still hung out with Lydia sometimes, and, from a distance, she seemed to be doing better.

“Hey." Stiles gave her his best impish grin. “Uh, do you have yesterday’s calc notes?”

Allison eyed him for a moment before nodding and standing back to let him in. He was pretty sure that the fact that it was an entirely innocent and mundane request was the only reason she visibly relaxed and didn’t just kick him out; it made him feel a little bad about the fact that it wasn’t the real reason he was here.

“So, Backstreet Boys, huh?” he teased to break the ice, arching an eyebrow. He definitely didn’t miss the faint pink that tinged her cheeks, or the tiny smile as she ducked her head and turned the stereo down.

“Guilty pleasure,” she mumbled, grabbing her backpack and beginning to dig through it.

Stiles rolled his eyes at that. “You and Scott are so meant for each other,” he muttered, quietly enough that she _probably_ didn’t hear.

“So are you feeling okay?” she asked over her shoulder, pulling out a binder.

He froze, heart suddenly pounding in his chest as Derek’s warning came back to him. She didn’t know, she couldn’t know, right? “Huh?” he deflected eloquently.

She frowned at him. “Yesterday, you weren’t in class. That isn’t like you. Were you sick?”

Relief hit him like a train. It wasn’t that he really thought Allison would try to kill him or anything; well, she probably wouldn’t. “Uh, yeah,” he lied as casually as he could, “Just some sniffles, it’s nothing.”

Stiles was never a still person, and the more anxious he got, the more he fiddled. He meandered, with attempted casualness, over to her desk, where an array of arrows of various shapes and states of assembly lay. “I thought you gave up hunting,” he pointed out, hoping the anxiety didn’t leak into his voice and make him sound confrontational. He picked up one of the arrows, the sleek shaft cool to the touch.

“Officially, we have,” she shrugged, coming over with the notes in hand. “But it doesn’t hurt to be prepared. You know, just in case.”

“Right, sure,” he agreed. She had a point, but given his recently acquired non-human status, he wasn’t exactly reassured. “So, uh, I should go.” He moved to put the arrow back down, but the smooth shaft slipped in his hand and at the same time Allison reached out to take it from him. He felt the thin edge of the tip against his fingertip, but didn’t register the pain until a moment later when a drop of his blood landed the desk’s painted white surface.

“Oh, crap, I’m so sorry,” she apologized quickly. She turned quickly to grab some tissues, but he waved them off, sucking on the cut. It was a little cut, and wasn’t bleeding much but it was enough to fill his mouth with the metallic taste that really shouldn’t be so familiar. There was something different about it though, something strangely more acrid than he was used to; and it really said something about his life that he was _used_ to the taste of his own blood.

“I’m sorry,” she gushed, “I shouldn’t have left them out like that. At least it was only one of the wolfsbane ones.” She hastily gathered up the arrows in the cloth, covering them.

Stiles’ initial reaction was to wonder nervously what might be on the tips of some of her other arrows if wolfsbane constituted an ‘only’. His second reaction was to freak out, because oh yeah, he’d lost his membership to the human club and joined the occasionally furry. His stomach twisted and he felt a rush of blood to his head as horror filled him. He knew it was slightly irrational, he’d seen Derek survive worse, but wouldn’t it be just like him to die from a tiny cut just two days after being bitten.

Clearly, something had shown on his face because Allison was frowning at him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Fine,” he said, voice a little too fast and a little too high as he hastily removed his finger from his mouth, “I, uh, I’ve got to go. So, um, thanks.” The room was suddenly spinning around him. He blinked, trying to clear his vision but things only became worse, taking on fragmented quality so sharp it send throbbing pain through his head. Shadows seemed to fill the room, reaching out to him, and when he squinted he almost... he almost saw-

“Stiles?” He blinked again and everything snapped back into place; no reaching skeletal claws, no fuzzy half formed shapes, though his head was still throbbing.

“I’m fine,” he repeated, feeling like a broken record. “Thanks.” He took the notes from her hand and was halfway to the door before he remembered the real reason he’d come. Cursing under his breath, he gave up on being subtle. “Hey, do you know anything about witches?” he asked, half turning back.

Her frown had deepened, and she looked baffled. “You mean like.... black cats and broomsticks witches?” Her face had taken on that confused, scrunched up expression it did whenever she thought he was being too weird for her to keep up with. There was no way she could fake that kind of confusion.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Bye.” He fled, unable to decide if he was relieved or disappointed that she didn’t know anything.

Stiles made it as far as the bushes outside of her house before he bent over retching. He could still taste the wolfsbane lingering on his tongue, but after a few minutes the panic faded and it occurred to him that despite his best efforts he didn’t actually feel sick, at all.

Wiping his mouth off and standing up, he frowned at his finger in the fading late afternoon light; the cut was still bleeding a little, but it wasn’t swollen, or purple-y vein-y, and it didn’t even hurt all that much. Objectively, he’d had worse papercuts before. All the same, he held it carefully the whole way home and rushed straight to the bathroom to wash it thoroughly. The restlessness that had plagued him for the past few days was beginning to turn into a heavy, deep sense of something being _wrong_.


	4. Chapter 4

________________________________________  
Chapter 4  
________________________________________

It was like being pulled head first into a frozen lake. It ran through him like a physical thing, pulling at his bones and raking through his lungs. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. A scream caught in his throat as the cold sharpened into pain. Pain like a hook in his chest pulling him in the wrong direction, and it was wrong, everything was just so _wrong_. 

It was a sensation that was horrifyingly familiar and only made him want to fight all the more. The darkness wasn’t complete this time. He wasn’t lost and directionless, floating formless in the void. In front of him, there actually was an in front of him a long, long way off, like trying to look through the wrong end of a telescope, there was something. Something that was not this cold, empty void. It was moving, moving further away; he couldn’t lose it, he couldn’t be lost here. He tried to run, scrambling to pull together his uncooperative, intangible limbs.

But the harder he tried to run, the further away escape seemed to move. He fought it, fought the cold seeping into him and weighing him down. He tried to reach out, straining, grasping for something to hold onto, some way to pull himself forward and free of this void. It seemed to last an eternity, in that horror movie slow motion sense, and no matter how hard he tried, how fast he ran, he couldn’t shake the cold sucking him back down.

And then the rage hit. Rage like he’d never felt before. A torrent of fire that shrieked through him, driving out the cold and filling him with a rush of burning power. He screamed, a sound that was all primal roar, and power, and agony. All at once like a lens zooming in he was flying toward escape; what had once been a tiny dot of a window in the far distance expanding until it filled the entire field of his vision, and suddenly... Derek.

Familiar red eyes glowed at him from under thick eyebrows that were drawn together in unmistakable concern, his face pinched. And there were hands, big warm hands that held so much strength, so much potential to hurt, but gripped his shoulders with nothing but grounding force.

And that... that was helping. A lot. Derek was warm, so warm and Stiles was so very cold; not just the aching, unnatural, soul deep cold that had plagued him constantly over the past few days, though that was still there in the corners of his lungs, dragging at every breath, but actual, physical cold because that’s how seasons work and he was wearing almost nothing. He didn’t spend a lot of time staring down at himself, preferring instead to huddle against Derek in a desperate attempt at absorbing his warmth, but now that he’d noticed he was painfully aware of the fact that he was somewhere in the middle of the woods wearing nothing but the shorts he’d gone to bed in the night before. Now that he’d noticed, he was also terribly aware of the fact that he was barefoot, mud streaked up to his knees, and shaking violently.

Derek was still touching him, though his hands had shifted from gripping Stiles’ arms to resting somewhere between his shoulders and the back of his neck. It was nice, really nice, under different circumstances a little awkward maybe, but right now just nice. He must have been hunching, attempting to curl in on himself because Derek’s collarbones were directly in front of his face and he was having a weirdly hard time resisting the urge to bury his nose in them.

“Stiles!” From the tone of Derek’s voice, practically shouting in his ear, Stiles had a feeling Derek had been trying to get his attention for a while.

“Huh,” he replied, his voice sounding distant and lethargic even to his own ears, “What?”

Derek made a noise, and Stiles had to still be at least partially dreaming because it sounded like there was worry mixed in with the frustration. Suddenly, Derek’s arms were no longer around him and he was no longer looming directly in front of Stiles. Stiles was not okay with that. He made a loud but inarticulate sound of protest to express his displeasure, but then something warm and heavy and almost as good as Derek settled around his shoulders.

He blinked, trying to make himself focus on something other than the admirable effort Derek’s t-shirt was putting forth to cover his pecks, trying to pull himself together. It was Derek’s jacket that had settled around his shoulders, he realized, as his jittering, flailing arms tried to find the sleeves. It took something of a collaborative effort, which surprisingly Derek was willing to provide, but they managed to get him securely zipped into the jacket. That was good, better, not as good as being pressed up against Derek, but his head was finally starting to clear and he’d take what he could get.

“Stiles.” That was Derek’s most patient version of the alpha voice and Stiles knew enough to know it meant pay attention _now_. “What are you doing out here?”

Stiles blinked again, licked his lips, fidgeted, kicked at some leaves, and avoided meeting Derek’s way too intense gaze. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to answer, it was that he couldn’t; he didn’t know what he was doing out here, he didn’t even know exactly where ‘out here’ was. He was observant enough to gather that it was the woods, and given Derek’s presence probably somewhere in the general vicinity of the Hale house, but beyond that he was at a loss. The last thing he remembered for sure was lying in bed picking at the band-aid covering the cut on his finger, then there’d been that bizarro dream, and now...

Panic started to hit him, and his head snapped down to look at himself, hands scrabbling to unzip the jacket. He didn’t get far before Derek’s hands were on him again, catching his own and stopping his frantic movement. But his breath was coming sharp and short and he had to see, he had to know-

“There’s no blood,” Derek’s voice was low, his hands still holding Stiles’ to keep them still. It was shockingly, uncomfortably intimate, but worked to make Stiles calm down at least a little. “You didn’t hurt anyone.” Derek may not be the most verbose of guys, but damn sometimes he knew exactly what to say.

Stiles took a careful, shaky breath, nodding to Derek that he wasn’t going to start flailing again so it was okay to let go of him. He shifted from foot to foot, hugging himself and tucking his hands under his armpits; the jacket helped but he was still cold. Derek was still watching him closely, eyes their usual human color, though his gaze was still inhumanly intense, which the shiver that ran down Stiles’ spine had absolutely nothing to do with. He was vaguely aware of the fact that Isaac was blatantly staring at them from a few feet behind Derek and it occurred to Stiles to wonder what _they_ were doing out here. But Derek spoke before he could ask.

“I told you we need to start your training,” he pointed out, with a certain amount of satisfaction. “Things like this won’t happen if you’re in control.”

Right, Derek was right, Derek was often right. But, on the plus side, this was a totally normal thing. So he'd done a little half-naked running around the woods in his sleep, so had Scott after he’d first been bitten; a lot of new werewolves probably did. It was no big deal. Of course, Scott had never told him about anything like being stuck in that void, or having to fight his way back, or this soul-sucking perpetual cold. But then again, he’d never asked.

Stiles fidgeted again, rubbing his left foot against his right leg and then vice versa in an attempt to warm them, and nodded, though despite his rational acceptance it was begrudging. “Today after school?” he offered with a sigh.

Derek nodded, patting him a little harder than necessary on the shoulder. “And try to remember your clothes,” he reminded. There was the tiniest hint of an upturn to the corner of his lips, and a ghost of crinkle at the corners of his eyes; and all the warm fuzzies Stiles might have been harboring? Gone. Derek Hale is an ass.

________________________________________

Awkward didn’t quite describe the ride back to his house; really freaking awkward got close. Stiles sat huddled in the passenger’s seat, arms tight around himself, while Isaac drove and glowered at the road in front of them. Derek had ignored their protests about the situation when he’d ordered Isaac to take Stiles home to get dressed. Not that Isaac had so much protested as he'd sneered disdainfully in Stiles’ direction; Stiles had protested, loudly. But Derek was the alpha, and he’d been overruled.

So Stiles was trying very hard to pretend that he wasn’t freaking out or stuck in a car with a dude who inexplicably hated his guts and kind of looked like he would happily eat him. It wasn’t easy. He was warmer now, thanks to Derek’s jacket, but he hadn’t completely shaken the chill yet, and his legs had begun to point out to him with very painful protest that he’d somehow made it from his warm, cozy bed to the middle of the woods on foot. He couldn’t help but feel that his grouchiness was at least a little bit justified; and whatever Isaac’s problem with him was, he was sick of it.

With a huff that was almost painfully loud in the silence of the car, Stiles reached out to turn on the heater, since Isaac hadn’t bothered. His huff was cut off however by a somewhat undignified squeak when Isaac’s hand was just _there_ , gripping his wrist painfully tight. “Ow,” he complained, attempting ineffectively to yank out of Isaac’s grip; it was like trying to fight free of professional grade handcuffs, which yes he had tried once... or a few times.

“Grow up,” Isaac scoffed, releasing him. “Werewolves don’t even feel cold, not like humans do.”

Stiles frowned; he was definitely still intimately acquainted with the feeling of cold. “What’s with the leather club jackets then?” he asked, evading the real issue.

“So that the humans don’t notice we don’t get cold.” Maybe Stiles was just being paranoid, but he was pretty sure there was an implied _dumbass_ somewhere in there.

He snorted, slouching further down in his seat when Isaac finally did let go of him. “Well, it makes you look like a bunch of creepers,” he muttered. He didn’t look, but, judging from the growl, Isaac’s eyes had probably taken a vaguely yellow hue. A few months ago that might have cowed him, but now he was just tired, and angry, and so over it. So he added, a little more loudly than necessary, “And could you stop driving like a maniac? I’d really rather not die again this week.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my driving,” Isaac snapped. True, Isaac’s reflexes were pretty good, and his hands were steady on the wheel. But, since the speedometer was wavering dangerously close to seventy, Stiles was not reassured. “Besides, we’d heal. Probably.”

There was a manic glint in Isaac’s eyes, and, though he wasn’t showing fang, his teeth were bared menacingly. Stiles had seen that look before, fairly often when Isaac had first been bitten, but not as much since. Rationally, a part of him knew there was probably a reason Isaac went a little crazy sometimes, and it probably had something to do with his dad; but knowing that didn’t make it any less scary.

“You’re the one who doesn’t want to get noticed by the humans,” Stiles pointed out between grit teeth. “What if my dad sees and pulls you over, huh?”

Isaac’s gaze slanted sideways to look at him, leaving the road unwatched for a risky fifteen seconds. He looked angrier than ever but, to Stiles’ relief, slowed down at least a little. For a while neither of them spoke as they fumed in silence. Stiles stared at first the trees, then the buildings that flashed past outside the passenger side window for several long minutes. He couldn't explain how, but Stiles could feel Isaac's anger fading, like raised hackles going down, without having to look at Isaac. It was a weird feeling, one that Stiles didn't know what to do with, and it only made his own anger crackle and prickle under his skin all the more. 

Maybe, if he'd stopped to think about it, he'd have realized that his anger wasn't rational; maybe he would have questioned why he was angry, and figured out that he didn't know why. Maybe he would have realized that something was wrong, that something unnatural was happening. But the anger pulsed like a living thing, throbbing all the way from the base of his skull to his temples and making it difficult to think about anything.

"Why do you hate me so much?" Stiles asked suddenly. It was something he'd wondered about in the past; he had guesses, assumptions. But he'd never dared to ask the question aloud, and certainly hadn't meant to bring it up right now.

Isaac jerked a little, like he'd been hit and his shoulders tightened. "I don't," he denied. "Hate you," he added, as though that needed clarifying. His voice was stiff but it wasn't so much anger as it was surprise, which Stiles thought was a little rich; it wasn't like Isaac hadn't openly express his dislike of Stiles before, on more than one occasion. 

Stiles snorted his disbelief, unable to hold the sound back. Isaac shot him a look, frowning and eyes narrowed, but there was something more than anger or insult there. "You definitely don't like me," Stiles rebutted.

Isaac focused back on the road, his knuckles white around the steering wheel and a muscle ticking in his jaw. "You turned down the bite," he muttered between grit teeth, like it was some sort of mortal sin. "Twice, unless Peter was lying when he said he offered it to you too."

Stiles slouched further in his seat, suspicions confirmed; so Isaac had become racist - species-ist? - against humans. His problem, not Stiles'. "So you hate me because I'm human," he surmised. "Or was," he corrected himself, crossing his arms defensively over his chest. It hurt, like a sharp, clanging echo in his chest, every time he remembered.

"You don't understand." Isaac shook his head, fervor in his voice. "Why would you turn down opportunity to be stronger, faster, _better_? Humans are so fragile, so-" _weak_. Isaac stopped before he said it, but it still echoed silently in the air between them. Stiles had a feeling Isaac wasn't actually talking him, or even humanity in general, not really; he was talking about himself. But even knowing that, Stiles was suddenly, irrationally, insulted. On his own behalf, and the behalf of humans everywhere.

The rushing of his own blood filled his ears, like it was boiling in his veins. He was flooded with adrenaline that made his heart rate pick up and his muscles tense. He wasn't usually a particularly confrontational person, but at that moment the sound of Isaac _breathing_ made Stiles want to pick a fight.

Things were very quickly about to get very ugly. Or rather, they might have, had Isaac not at that moment pulled the Camaro gracefully into the Stilinski driveway. Distracted, but not at all calmed, Stiles jumped hastily out of the car almost before it had fully stopped moving.

“I’ll wait here,” Isaac called after him, turning on the car radio and slouching down.

“No, you won’t,” Stiles snapped back over his shoulder, not pausing as angry, purposeful strides took him up the driveway toward his house. “I can find my own way to school.”

Isaac shrugged. “Alpha’s orders.”

Stiles glowered. He glowered up the driveway. He grumbled up the stairs. He seethed his way through a shower. By the time he was dressed and on his way back downstairs with his backpack over his shoulder, he was livid. He could feel his pulse beating away too rapid, too sharp in his throat and there was an intoxicating zing in the rush of his blood. It was a cold rage, one that filled his mind with clarity that was almost painful in its sharpness.

Stiles caught sight of himself in the hallway mirror on his way out and it was enough to make him pause, pushing back the rage for just a moment. But though he looked a little paler than usual, the rest of his face was the same old human face he’d always worn: no glowing eyes, no fangs or fur or pointy ears. He remained clear headed just barely long enough to figure that, as long as he didn’t start to shift, he was safe. Then rage rushed over him again and the concern vanished back to the back of his mind.

It ran in waves, like a dribble of icy water creating a shiver from the back of his head across his scalp and down his neck with every breath he took. He had the strangest sense of being aware of everything, and nothing. He _knew_ that he’d gone through the front door and locked it behind him, but it was something so commonplace that he didn’t actually remember doing it; between one pulse of rage and the next he was simply there, like the beats of a strobe light, opening the door, turning the lock, on the last step. Without actually seeing Isaac, he knew the werewolf was watching him, but he didn’t stop. Keys in hand, he moved with firm, purposeful steps to the Jeep, climbed in, started the ignition.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Isaac sitting in the car behind him, eyes narrowed. He threw the Jeep into reverse and didn’t look back again. He _knew_ Isaac would move in time. It wasn’t precognition exactly, it was just that, knowledge; a strange surety that directed his movements.

The whole way to school he drove just a little too fast, blew through yellow lights just in the nick of time, and swerved around corners without looking first. It was reckless and irresponsible and so unlike him; under any other circumstance it would have been horrifying, he would have been crippled by anxiety and caution. But the rage drove him, the pulse of it behind his eyes making everything too bright, too clear and he just knew exactly how everything, every fiber of reality functioned and slotted into the right place.

He didn’t stop until he screeched into the last parking spot right in front of the school; a prime spot he’d never managed to catch empty before. He barely made it a few steps onto the sidewalk when a squeal of brakes and the slam of a car door alerted him to Isaac’s arrival. He didn’t stop, but a few moments later Isaac’s hand on his shoulder pulled him short, jerking him around.

“What the hell is your problem?” Isaac demanded, voice hissing dangerously low between his teeth.

The growl in Isaac’s voice should have terrified him, the rigid set to his shoulders and curl of his upper lip obvious signs of a beta about to lose control. Stiles should have heard the threat in his voice, seen the way his teeth were just beginning to take on a point and backed down to defuse the situation. He’d gotten good at that, he’d had to. But not this time. This time, he shoved back, literally. He pushed Isaac’s hand off of his shoulder and shoved against his chest, though it did nothing but make Isaac’s eyes widen slightly in surprise.

“My problem?” Stiles shouted, as close to in Isaac’s face as he could ever get given the height difference. “What the hell is your problem? You think I don’t see how you look at me like I’m shit? You think I can’t tell how insanely jealous you are? How you’re so pathetically desperate for Scott’s attention, hell, for any one’s attention? At least when Daddy beat you, you had his attention, right?”

The physical push may not have had any effect on Isaac, but Stiles’ words did. Isaac took half a step back, chest rising and falling rapidly with shallow breaths. Isaac’s anger vanished and in its wake his face crumpled, eyebrows drawing together. He opened his mouth to say something but Stiles didn’t give him the chance.

“You act like you’re all tough and scary now, but no one is fooled. You’re just as scared and pathetic as you were before, the only difference is now you won’t admit it!” 

“Stiles!” Scott’s voice pierced through the haze of rage around him, derailing it but not making it dissipate. He blinked, registering Isaac’s stricken expression, and a part of him felt a vindictive rush; another part of him just felt sick.

Stiles didn’t answer Scott, who’d left his bike wheels spinning on the sidewalk to intercede. Isaac standing frozen in shock in front of the still running car, and Stiles turned his back on them both as he stormed toward the school. 

Scott caught up to him in the hallway, backpack bouncing as he jogged to get around in front of Stiles. “Stiles, you need to calm down,” he hissed urgently, stepping sideways to block him when Stiles tried to walk past.

“I am calm,” he snapped, sounding more than a little bit hysterical. He was still angry, still so angry, but it wasn’t consuming him anymore. Where before it had taken over his whole mind, making it impossible to think beyond the rage, it had now receded some; enough for him to realize that this wasn’t right, it wasn’t like him.

Scott was staring at him with those big, concerned puppy eyes, reaching out to put a hand that was no doubt meant to be soothing on his shoulder. “I know it’s hard,” he said, lowering his voice and stepping closer, “but you need to take a deep breath. You can’t shift, not here, not now.”

“I’m not going to shift,” Stiles refuted between his teeth. His fists were clenched at his sides, trembling with the rush of rage-fueled adrenaline coursing through him. For the first time in his life, he legitimately wanted to punch Scott in the face. There was a part of him, though it was alarmingly small and weak, that was trying to remind him that Scott was important, that Scott was safety, and happiness, and _home_. But there was another part of him, so loud it was almost overwhelming, that was nothing but a screaming, tearing, whirlwind of rage that was desperate to lash out.

Scott didn’t seem to pick up on in his inner struggle. “Seriously, what is wrong with you, Stiles?” he pressed. “I know the first few weeks are hard, but it shouldn’t be like this. I mean, you’re acting all... weird, not the way any of the rest of us acted.”

“Just leave me alone,” Stiles snarled, trying to push past him. He needed to get away, he needed to get away right now.

“That,” Scott insisted, refusing to let him go. Scott’s earnest concern was beginning to wilt in the face of Stiles’ hostility, his voice starting to pitch louder and harsher. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. For months now, you’ve been pushing me to join in with the pack and ‘accept my wolfhood,’ but, ever since you got bitten, all you’ve done is avoid us.” There was hurt in his voice, hurt and confusion and concern. Stiles had always been logical one between them, the one who frequently got them into trouble but always got them back out; the lost confusion in Scott's voice resonated somewhere deep inside of Stiles, stirring the tiny part of him that hadn't been consumed by rage.

Something in Scott’s words hit home; Stiles knew, he _knew_ something wasn’t right. But he couldn’t stop it. It was like being stuck in a tornado in his own mind, aware that it was destroying everything he loved, but unable to free himself from it.

“I didn’t want this,” Stiles snapped. “I never wanted to be this.” He remembered now, that was why he was angry. Wasn’t it? Derek shouldn’t have bit him. Derek should have let him go. He was supposed to be angry at Derek. But he wasn’t angry at anybody, was he? Not really. He was just angry, so terribly angry.

“Neither did I!” Scott answered, both of them on the verge of shouting. It was a valid point, a true point, but it did nothing to defuse the screaming in Stiles’ head. “I didn’t want this any more than you do,” Scott pressed, “But it happened, and now we have to deal with it. That’s what you kept telling me. So stop being a hypocrite and let us help you.”

Stiles didn’t even realize he’d moved until he was staring at a bright splotch of blood on the dull metal of the nearest locker. A sharp, agonizing pain was shooting up his arm. He must have turned, must have clenched his fist and slammed it into the locker, but somehow his mind had simply skipped over those parts and all he was left with was the aftermath of a very stupid impulse.

“Shit, Stiles, your eyes.” Scott’s exclamation was soft, shocked. He’d gone pale, mouth hanging open as he stared at his best friend. Stiles couldn’t remember ever seeing Scott look that horrified before.

Stiles blinked. He felt dizzy, pain radiating up and down his entire arm, sharp enough to finally start to clear his head. He stared numbly down at his own hand, knuckles split and bleeding, already starting to swell, and up at the locker he’d hit, unaffected but for a streak of blood, and over to Scott who looked as though he’d frozen. Suddenly, the gorge was rising in his throat and the room was spinning around him. He ran.

He was on his knees in front of the nearest toilet just in time to heave up what little remained of last night’s dinner. He didn’t move for what felt like a long time, though the retching had subsided. He could feel Scott hovering somewhere behind him, radiating enough concern and anxiety to make him feel nauseous all over again. His head was ringing and the corners of his eyes burned and as the anger receded and curled up away in the back of his mind again, all he wanted to do was lay down where he was and sleep.

When he finally did move, it wasn’t very far, only enough to rest his back against the side of the stall rather than remain hunched over the toilet. The cold, warped metal of the stall wall felt good against his throbbing head and he let himself sprawl there with a low groan. The last hour of his life kept replaying in his mind, Isaac’s stricken look and the horror on Scott’s face flashing again and again in his mind’s eye, each time like a knife to the gut. Now that it was over, he felt horrified, sickened by himself. This wasn’t right, none of this was right.

Dimly, he was aware that it wasn’t just him and Scott any more. Other members of the pack had arrived and were hovering just outside his stall. He couldn’t tell how many of them were there, or who they were, but he had the curious sense that if he focused enough, he could tell without looking. But he was tired, and sore, and couldn’t quite bring himself to care. He did, however, know that Derek was one of them. It was like a faint hum in the back of his mind, the slightest of prickles on the back of his neck, that said _Derek_.

He felt more than he heard movement, and smelled the sharp tang of aftershave that he only identified as Derek’s because he’d been smelling it on Derek’s jacket all morning; which coincidentally he was still wearing. After a moment he summoned enough energy to let his head roll to the side and crack his eyes open. Derek was squatting next to him, just close enough for Stiles to feel the unnatural warmth that radiated off of him. Stiles didn’t mean to, but he didn’t quite have the energy to stop himself, so he sort of just started tilting in Derek’s direction until the alpha put a supportive hand on his shoulder.

“Derek,” he mumbled, Derek’s face surprisingly large so close to his own, “what’s wrong with me?” His voice was rough, rasping against his throat and his mouth still tasted like vomit and it was a fight to keep his eyes open, but somehow with Derek’s hand on his shoulder, he was already starting to feel marginally better.

Derek swallowed and Stiles’ eyes followed the movement of his Adam’s apple with hazy fascination. With some effort, he lifted his head enough to meet Derek’s eyes; eyes that were all dark pupil in the center and pale stormy blue around the edges with the little crinkles of frown lines around them. Stiles must have been even more exhausted than he’d realized because from this close, he could have sworn he saw just a hint of fear in Derek’s eyes. 

“We need to get you out of here,” he deflected.

“Derek,” Stiles insisted, grabbing Derek’s shirt with his uninjured hand when Derek tried to pull away.

When Derek finally answered, his voice was low enough for Stiles’ ears alone. “I don’t know.”

________________________________________

Stiles knew he should probably be paying attention; his friends’ voices floated through the open car door, washing over him. They were tense, concerned, arguing, and he knew he should be out there trying to mediate, because that was what he did. But he was tired, so tired, and the car was warm. His hand was still throbbing and he’d been absently playing guess-the-number-of-broken-bones with himself off and on for several minutes; meanwhile, the pounding of his head provided a dizzying counterpoint.

He was slumped in the passenger seat of Derek’s Camaro, though he was a little spotty on how he’d gotten there. The vague flashes he did remember seemed to involve an embarrassing amount of invading Derek’s personal space and might have included the words ‘you smell nice;' maybe it was for the best he didn’t remember the rest.

“Derek, something is _wrong_ ,” Scott was protesting. Stiles kept his eyes closed, trying to sink deeper into the leather of the seat.

“Yes, clearly,” was Derek’s irritated reply.

“His eyes turned white!” Scott’s voice was rising and Stiles winced a little as it made his head throb all the more. “Why would they do that?”

“Maybe, if you stopped standing here arguing with me, I could go try to figure that out,” Derek snapped.

“Just like Stilinski to have super strength and still lose a fight to a locker.” That was Erica’s voice, and for once her idle detachment was almost refreshing. Both Derek and Scott ignored her.

“I’m coming with you,” Scott insisted.

“No, you’re not. You have to go to class, do normal things, and keep up appearances. If you don’t, people are going to start noticing.” Derek was using his alpha voice again, not that it’d ever really had much effect on Scott.

“Because you’re always so subtle,” Jackson decided to point out, being a snot as usual.

Stiles’ brain was actually attempting to flinch away from the sound of their voices. “Stop,” he tried, but his voice was low and raspy and Scott had started talking again and no one was listening.

“I’m not just-”

“God, just stop already!” With one great heave of effort, Stiles had half levered himself out of the car and was leaning against the doorframe like his life depended on it. He felt like death warmed over, and judging from the way they’d all stopped to stare at him he probably looked just as bad. “Derek’s right, just go to class, all of you.” It was really hard to sound authoritative when he felt like he was going to collapse any second. Scott opened his mouth to protest, but Stiles cut him off impatiently, saying, “Seriously dude, just go. If anything else happens, you’ll be the first to know.”

Scott’s face took on the mulish, sulky expression that Stiles knew all too well, but what little energy Stiles had summoned was gone. He dropped limply back into the seat before Scott could start arguing again. He slammed the door behind him, encasing himself in the quiet security of the car’s heavy frame. He leaned back against the seat, closing his eyes again and was relieved when, a few minutes later, Derek slid into the driver’s seat. There was a moment of silence during which Stiles was pretty sure Derek was staring at him, but then finally the car started and they were on their way.

Stiles slouched lower in the seat, cradling his damaged hand to his chest as he listened to the hum of the engine and rush of air moving past them.

“It isn’t healing,” Derek pointed out, no traces of a question in his voice. Stiles had a feeling if he opened his eyes Derek would be looking at him and not the road, so he decided it was better to keep them closed.

“You’re not going to do that thing where you hurt me more to trigger the healing, are you?” he asked, trying to ignore the slight tremor the snuck into his voice.

Derek was silent for a long minute and Stiles could _feel_ his discomfort before he finally answered. “No. It probably wouldn’t work.” 

Stiles didn’t know whether to be comforted or not. He let his head roll toward the window, turning his face up toward the sunbeam that was filtering in through the glass and silence descended between them again. Stiles could feel himself drifting off, sinking deeper into his own body as it became remote and weighted down. Thankfully, even the pain was starting to lessen as his mind began to let go.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” he mumbled, too far gone to hold back the simple truth that had been hovering in the air between them ever since that day in the woods. “You should have let me go.”

Derek didn’t answer and Stiles hugged the leather jacket he was somehow still wearing tighter around himself. The inescapable chill was beginning to creep back up in his chest, but the jacket was warm and the sunshine beat against his face. He didn’t understand what was happening to him, and he starting to get really, truly scared; but for now, if only for a little while, he felt heavy and relaxed and the sweet drag of sleep was tugging at him. The last thing he was aware of was Derek’s voice, speaking words he probably wasn’t meant to hear.

“I couldn’t.”


	5. Chapter 5

________________________________________

Chapter 5  
________________________________________

_-’gone home’ the note reads, and it confuses him because they don’t have a home, not anymore-_

_-”ome by sometime,” she smiles at him, and it’s strangely predatory but he can’t say no-_

_-”hurry up and blow out the candles” they urge, laughing. He blows and blows but the flames just get bigger-_

Stiles woke up understandably disoriented. First of all, he was lying down, which was not the position he remembered being in, and his nose was smashed into a pillow that smelled so strongly of Derek it was making him dizzy. It took significant effort to crack an eye open enough to confirm that he was in fact not laying in a puddle of eau de Derek; however, he did appear to be in Derek’s bed. Ridiculously, it struck him as weird that Derek even _had_ a bed. Not that it was much of one, really, more like a mattress on the floor with two flat pillows and a moth eaten blanket.

Curiosity got the better of him and led him to make the very poor decision of attempting to sit up to see the room better. Unfortunately, as he was lying on his stomach, he automatically attempted to push himself up on his hands, which his broken hand immediately made very loud and painful protest to. He groaned, dropping back onto the pillow quickly and clutching his hand. Despite the pain, he couldn’t help but notice that it had been bandaged, crudely and in a way that probably wasn’t actually doing anything helpful, but he still felt weirdly touched. His hand was definitely not healing though; it had swollen to nearly twice its usual size and the bandage was still red from his split knuckles. He’d seen Scott heal from far worse in a matter of minutes, and he really just wasn’t ready to think through the implications of this, so he swallowed back a little nausea and decided to focus on the fact that he was in Derek freaking Hale’s room.

As it turned out, Derek’s room was somehow both sad and surprisingly normal. The too bright sunshine coming through the massive hole above him told him two things; one, that it was probably early afternoon, and two that he appeared to be on what was left of the second floor of the former Hale house. There wasn’t a whole lot to the room to begin with, it was fairly small and, besides the mattress, was occupied by an old oak dresser, a broken chair, a few boxes piled haphazardly by the door, a closet with the door hanging off of only one hinge, and a small pile of debris that had been pushed into a corner and apparently forgotten about. Curiously, the dresser, closet, and a significant portion of the boxes appeared to be empty, and yet there was stuff everywhere. Clothes were strewn across the floor and a small mound of fast food wrappers and balled up pieces of paper sat not far from the bed next to a small stack of books. Additionally, there appeared to be a modest collection of knives jumbled up on top of the dresser. Suddenly, Stiles had to repress the insane urge to snigger; Derek was a slob.

Now that he was more awake and managing not to writhe in pain, he was beginning to feel a little weird. He was in Derek’s room, in Derek’s bed, and by the way, where was Derek? Carefully sitting up, he found his shoes discarded by the bed and pulled them on, something slightly more difficult than he’d expected with only one hand. Standing was a slow process too, and, once he was on his feet, he had to stop and breathe deeply for a minute while he waited for the vertigo to pass. Derek’s jacket was draped across the back of the chair, and on impulse Stiles grabbed it and put it back on; or rather, he put it back on one arm and just sort of awkwardly draped it over the other shoulder, since he didn’t want to move his broken hand too much.

He found his phone under the jacket; the display showed twelve missed messages from Scott. His stomach twisted guiltily as the look he’d last seen on Scott’s face flashed before his eyes. He swallowed, feeling his throat tighten, and took the chicken way out by texting Scott. 

_I’m fine. All quiet on the crazy front right now. Go to work and don’t worry._

He knew the last bit was probably futile; worrying was one of the things that Scott excelled at, but he left it there all the same.

On his way toward the door, his eye caught on a poster that was half falling off of the wall, mostly hidden behind the dresser. Now that he was looking at them, he saw that the walls had once been a dark blue, though the paint was badly faded now where it wasn’t charred or covered in water stains. Unable to suppress his curiosity, he pushed up the drooping edge of poster, wincing a little at the loud crinkle it made. It was a Breaking Benjamin poster, a band he vaguely remembered hearing something about once or twice in middle school. It occurred to him that this wasn’t just Derek’s room, it was Derek’s room _before_. For the first time, it really hit home to him that Derek had had a _before_ , that there had been a time before the fire when Derek had had a family, and interests, and a life; he hadn’t always just been the grumpy, vaguely creepy sourwolf Stiles knew and, even though a tiny part of him still cringed at admitting it, had in some way come to care about. Derek had actually once been a, relatively, normal teenager. 

Something in Stiles’ gut twisted uncomfortably and suddenly he didn’t want to look at the sad, torn old poster anymore. He wiped his hand on his jeans compulsively as he pulled away and swallowed back the weird fluttering his pulse was doing somewhere in the back of his throat. He employed a degree of caution when leaving the room; there was no one in sight, but if there were any werewolves in the house they were no doubt fully aware he was awake and moving.

The rest of the upper floor, or what was left of it, appeared to be unoccupied. He couldn’t resist the urge to snoop, just a little. While he knew that Isaac at least was living here too, judging by the state of the rest of the upstairs, he probably chose to sleep somewhere downstairs where it was more stable. The stairs creaked ominously when he put his weight on them and it took a sort of tip-toed run to get him down them as fast as possible.

He’d never really been in the Hale house before, not long enough to really look around. Derek had moved back into it with Isaac shortly after making his truce with the Argents, but they’d still been holding most pack meetings at the abandoned rail depot. He had tried to snoop a few times years ago, shortly after the fire; driven by curiosity he’d come out here once in awhile, when his dad was working and Scott was busy, just to poke around. But he’d never been able to force himself past the threshold. Mostly, he'd just crept around the outside and peered in the broken windows. He’d never even been able to explain to himself why he didn’t go in, though he’d made a myriad of excuses, everywhere from the roof might collapse on him to the fact that it was an invasion of privacy. 

But the truth was that the house had creeped him out, a great looming shell filled with tragic memories, that, though they weren’t his, were strong enough to leave their shadows everywhere. He didn’t know if it was because he was older now and less prone to such flights of fancy, or because Derek was back and the house was no longer empty, but now it was just a house. 

It was weird to see though, where the past blended with the present; like where the wooden floor in what had been the living room still had indents worn into it where the armchair, that was now charred and flipped over on the other side of the room, had once sat. Yet at the same time, there was evidence of their restoration efforts, like tarps over the broken windows and the couch that sat next to where the chair had been; it was old and sagged a little in the middle and Stiles guessed it had been rescued from someone’s trash, but it was clean and a book was laying open and face down as though someone had just been sitting there. Past, tragic past, and present all blended together in a way that felt inexplicably homey.

He was about to leave the room and go investigate the fact that he was pretty sure he could smell something of an edible nature, when it occurred to him: there was a couch right there. He could see the front door from where he stood. Derek had for some reason chosen to walk right past a perfectly functional couch in order to carry him all the way upstairs and let Stiles sleep in his bed. Not only that, but he’d also taken the time to bandage up Stiles’ hand, and take off his shoes and jacket so that he could sleep comfortably. Stiles was starting to regret being unconscious for that, because he couldn’t quite imagine Derek being thoughtful like that and his brain was sort of starting to short circuit trying. Sure, he knew that deep down Derek was a good guy. And the more time they spent together, the less terrifying he became, but it was still difficult to reconcile the prickly, grumpy wolf he knew with a guy who’d carry him inside and tuck him into bed.

Luckily, he was pulled from that thought and back into the moment because he was definitely smelling food now and his stomach was starting to point out that he had, once again, missed a meal or two thanks to supernatural shenanigans. Shaking off the somewhat confusing and troubling thought process he’d been down spiraling into, he turned and followed his nose toward the kitchen.

Compared to the rest of the house, the kitchen was surprisingly clean. It had been a large, airy room in the back corner of the house, with several large windows that looked out into the backyard; those windows were mostly broken and covered with tarps now, but the walls were more or less intact. Unlike the rest of the house, this room looked less haunted by tragedy but more like it had simply been gutted. The usual kitchen appliances were either obviously broken or missing entirely, leaving only shadows on the walls where they had been.

It was not what was missing from the room, however, that made Stiles’ brain threaten to short circuit again, it was what the room contained. Namely, Derek. Not that that was shocking, this was Derek’s house after all. Derek was pretty much looking like his usual self, pants that displayed his ridiculous thighs, t-shirt that looked like it was trying to fuse with rippling muscles, and entirely too intense scowl of concentration that whatever he was looking at probably didn’t deserve; he was sans his jacket though, which left the image somewhat incomplete, but, seeing as Stiles was starting to grow fond of the jacket, and if Isaac was right and Derek really didn’t feel the cold Stiles saw no pressing reason to give it back.

It was what Derek was doing that made Stiles stop; he was cooking, sort of. He stood at an island in the middle of the room, a solid, stainless steel one that was half hidden under a large cooler and several shopping bags, and he was holding a spatula, flipping what appeared to be a grilled cheese sandwich. Derek was grilling cheese.

He didn’t look up, though he obviously knew Stiles was there. “It’ll be ready in a minute,” he grunted, adjusting the skillet so that it sat more squarely in the center of the hotplate he was using. He made a pointed gesture with his head that wasn’t so much an invitation as a command toward the mismatched stools that lined the opposite side of the island.

It took Stiles a minute to make sure he wasn’t still dreaming, and then a few minutes more to wrap his head around the fact that this was reality. It shouldn’t have been shocking really; Derek was a person, scary werewolf or no, and Stiles knew that he ate, he’d even seen Derek eat once or twice. But there was something about the mundanity of it, especially so shortly after waking up in Derek’s bed, it was really hitting home that Derek had a life outside of creeping menacingly in tree lines. Granted, it didn’t seem to be much of a life, but it was concrete. Stiles now knew, not just that Derek ate and slept in an abstract sense of that it was necessary to survive, but he knew where Derek slept, and ate, and left his clothes all over the floor. It somehow just put Derek in a whole new, so much more real light, and Stiles wasn’t sure how to deal with it.

He did eventually sit, though he staunchly insisted, mentally, that it had nothing to do with Derek’s non-verbal command and everything to do with the fact that he was hungry and physical proximity was more likely to get him fed faster. He chose the stool that leaned at the least precarious angle, poked through the closest bags out of curiosity, then got bored and decided to simply stare at Derek instead.

Derek kept his eyes on the skillet. Stiles fidgeted, clicked his tongue a few times, and picked at the bandage on his hand before he finally gave in and broke the silence. “So...” he tried, eloquently.

Derek did that thing where he looked at him without actually moving his head, making the usual penetrating glare all the more forceful framed by those intense eyebrows above and ridiculous cheekbones below. Well, now Stiles really didn’t have anything to say; unfair.

“You should really clean your room,” he blurted, with that little lopsided grin that said both I-have-no-control-over-my-mouth-whatsoever and why-yes-I-am-suicidal. Derek quirked an eyebrow at him and pointedly flipped the sandwich again.

“You seem to be feeling better.” Somehow, Derek made that sound insulting.

He fidgeted, picking at the bandage again; he knew he shouldn’t, and he didn’t particularly want to because it made his hand hurt more, but it was beginning to itch and he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “Yeah, well, I’m awake and not biting people’s head off, figuratively, so I guess in a matter of opinion,” he rambled noncommittally. 

Derek’s eyes, of course, zeroed in on his hand with an uncomfortable level of intensity. “It still isn’t healing,” he observed, with an expression that was somewhere between puzzled and offended.

“Yeah, well, apparently I’m worse at being a werewolf than Scott,” he muttered. That was mean, he didn’t know why he’d said that. God, what was wrong with him? He groaned and slumped against the counter, but his attempt to bury his face in his arms was aborted by the throbbing in his hand.

Derek didn’t say anything, and when Stiles peeked up at him he was wearing that expression that said he was thinking so hard it kind of hurt. Neither of them said anything and a few minutes later a paper towel laden with sandwiches appeared before him with a squishy thump. Relieved and successfully distracted from mentally bemoaning his life, Stiles dug in eagerly. The sandwiches were actually surprisingly good, with just the right amount of butter and a strongly cheese slanted cheese-to-bread ratio; except for being just a little bit burnt around the edges they were perfect, and Stiles had a sneaking suspicion that that was Derek’s revenge for the room cleaning comment.

Derek turned off the hotplate and put away the sandwich supplies without a word, though silence wasn’t unusual for him. Stiles made it through two sandwiches before finally blurting what was on his, and probably Derek’s mind. “Unless I’m not a werewolf.”

Derek stilled, arm half buried in ice as he was midway through fishing around in the cooler. His shoulders tensed and a muscle ticked in his jaw, but after a moment he continued his fishing and withdrew a soda, which he set in front of Stiles without comment.

“I mean, it’s sort of obvious at this point,” Stiles continued around a mouthful of bread and cheese, though he swallowed before continuing, “I’m not doing anything a new werewolf should. No super senses, or increased strength. I broke my hand on a locker that you could have squished between two fingers, and I’m not healing. And I haven’t shifted at all; I don’t think I can.” His words came faster as he spoke, tripping over one another as the whole list of things there were just wrong came pouring out of him. “I don’t have any maiming and killing urges, but I am angry in a not normal way. It’s all the time, not just like a temper control problem, it’s just there like a living thing in my head and when it takes over I can’t-” Stiles stopped, a shudder running down his spine as he remembered the rage that had taken over him that morning. “It’s like it’s not me.” His voice had lowered, like there was something rough in his throat; something like fear. “I mean, it is me, I’m there, I know what I’m doing and I even know why, sort of. But I’m not in control, and not just in a I-can’t-stop-myself way, but in a literal _it’s-not-me-doing-it_ way.”

Derek had gravitated closer to him as he spoke, a deep crease between his eyebrows. “Stiles-” he started, but Stiles wasn’t finished yet.

“And I heard, you know, what Scott said about my eyes, how they went white. I mean what does that even mean? What does that?” He turned to Derek, food forgotten, eyes wide and stomach flip-flopping, desperate for answers he knew Derek didn’t have. He’d been suppressing it until now, subconsciously, burying it under anger and avoidance and denial. But now he was facing it head on, the train had left the station and it was too late to stop, everything billowing up at once; the confusion, the helplessness, the terror. His eyes were burning like he was going to cry, but there were no tears to shed and his hands were shaking, breath coming short and fast. It was like a panic attack, but worse, so much worse.

Derek was staring at him, face gone sort of pale with an expression that was somewhere between deer in headlights and fight or flight. He was hovering just out of arm’s reach, as though if he came any closer, Stiles’ emotional breakdown might be contagious. “Stiles, you need to breathe,” was the incredibly helpful response he eventually came up with.

Stiles laughed, or maybe sobbed, he couldn’t tell the difference any more. “That’s just it, isn’t it,” he pointed out hysterically, “It’s you, you need me to breathe. I was perfectly fine being dead, but nooooo, you just had to go and screw with nature, didn’t you? People die, Derek! They die, and then they’re gone, and they’re not supposed to come back!” Stiles was shouting and he didn’t even know what for, making emphatic but meaningless gestures. Derek looked like he’d been punched in the face. “You don’t get to just pull miracle cures out of your butt- fangs, whatever! Because now I’m just this... this unnatural thing! I’m not a werewolf, but I’m definitely not human. So what am I? Some kind of-of zombie-ghost-thing, not dead but not alive? Some freak stuck here where I don’t belong anymore?”

He stopped, chest heaving and now he was pale too; he could literally feel the blood draining from his face as his own words sunk in. Bile began to rise in its place and oh god this was all so fucked up. He was seventeen-fucking-years old; he wasn’t supposed to be here, he wasn’t supposed to be dealing with this insanity. His head was spinning, or maybe the room was, he couldn’t tell and little black and red dots were dancing in front of his eyes. A scream rose up inside him, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t his own and everything was so jumbled and tangled and broken; _wrong_.

Derek stood there staring at him, looking young and helpless and scared. And fuck it if in that moment Stiles didn't hate him for it, just a little bit, because at the end of the day Derek was just so _human_. He didn't know what he was doing any more than the rest of them did. If Stiles had ever needed the big bad alpha to just swoop in with all the answers, it was right then. But Derek was just standing there uselessly, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides like he didn't know what to do with them; and it was pissing Stiles off.

Except it wasn't normal anger. This time Stiles could feel the difference, could feel the way it bubbled in his chest and tore away rational thought from his brain. That wasn't the anger Stiles was used to; that wasn't _his_ anger. Suddenly it was fear sweeping through him instead. Terrified of losing himself again, like he had earlier at school, he turned away from Derek. He didn't understand it, didn't know _what_ it was, he just knew that there was something that would steal his body away from him and make him do unspeakable things if he let it.

He gripped the edge of the counter with his good hand in a desperate attempt to ground himself. The sound of his own sharp, short breaths being sucked in through his teeth echoed in his ears and he closed his eyes to block out the blurry, red haze that his vision had become. He could still feel Derek, though, hovering just out of reach, could feel him radiating worry and confusion. Because Derek was just as scared as he was. Because Derek had saved his life, not for the first time. Derek hadn't meant for this to happen, he'd just wanted to save Stiles. Because Derek _cared_.

Just like that, Stiles' anger dissipated. What was he even angry for to begin with? Yeah, he hadn't wanted the bite, but he hadn't wanted to be _dead_ either, and Derek had had no way of knowing there'd be complications. The other anger, the anger that _wasn't_ his, didn't dissipate, but it did back off a little as though when Stiles' real anger faded it had somehow lost its grip on him. It withdrew to curl back up in the pit of his stomach like some great worm just waiting for the next opportunity to try and dig its way in; the visual made Stiles shudder.

After a few minutes his breaths came easier. When the anger withdrew, he was left with just a slow burning, exhausted sort of terror. Neither Stiles nor Derek spoke as Stiles' breathing began to slow and he tentatively opened his eyes. Derek hadn't moved, still standing a few feet away, though his arm was lifted as though he'd half started to reach for Stiles' shoulder before stopping himself. The silence began to weigh down on them and Derek dropped his hand. Stiles stared at him, and even though Derek had utterly failed to actually do anything helpful, Stiles was suddenly ridiculously grateful he was there. Vaguely, Stiles wondered what exactly Derek had seen; had it looked like just a panic attack? Could Derek tell that the anger wasn't entirely Stiles'? Maybe... Maybe it smelled different somehow? Maybe there was some empirical proof that this wasn't all in his head.

He might have asked, but he was cut off by Derek's phone ringing. It was sudden, and sort of shocking as it cut through the silence like a knife and made both of them jump. Derek scrambled for the phone, it taking longer than necessary for him to fish it out of his pocket. There was something about the tension in Derek's shoulders, the way his lips pinched together into a tight little line when he looked at the name displayed on his phone's screen that made Stiles' stomach twist in automatic response.

"Who is it?" Stiles asked, because there was no reason for Derek to look like that if it was just Scott or one of the pack members. There was a very short list of other people who might call Derek, as far as Stiles' knew.

"Peter," Derek answered distractedly. He didn't look up from the phone that he was gripping just a little too tightly. It was still ringing, a shrill, increasingly insistent noise that grated on Stiles' nerves.

Something in Stiles' gut recoiled instinctively at the name. He hadn't actually seen Peter since the night they'd defeated Gerard. A few weeks later, after much pestering, Derek had eventually told Stiles the full story of Peter's resurrection. He'd ended the story by declaring gruffly that he'd kicked Peter out of Beacon Hills. Personally, Stiles thought that was letting him off easy, after all the trouble he'd caused and murdering he'd done; but he supposed technically Peter was the only family Derek had left, so he'd kept that opinion to himself.

"I thought you weren't talking to him anymore." It was the mildest way Stiles could voice his disapproval.

Derek glanced at him guiltily, but answered the phone. He half turned away from Stiles as he did so, as though that afforded him some privacy. Stiles' watched the way Derek's t-shirt flexed and strained around shoulder muscles that had gone rigid with tension. The sudden urge to reach out and touch Derek rose up in his chest and made his fingers twitch.

Derek was silent for several moments, listening to whatever Peter was saying on the other end of the line. He shook his head, like that was a helpful contribution to the thus far one-sided phone conversation; though, Stiles considered distractedly, maybe for werewolves it was.

"Is there anything else you can think of?" Derek asked at length. Whatever Peter said, Derek did not like it. He snarled into the receiver in a way that made a little shiver run down Stiles' spine. "No. I've told you all there is-" Derek began pacing around the island tersely, holding the phone so tightly to his ear that Stiles could swear he heard the plastic screaming.

Stiles could only watch and listen with rising anxiety. Somehow, paranoid or not, he just knew they were talking about him. Derek looked like he was about to explode, his movements becoming jerkier and more tense the longer Peter's slick voice murmured in his ear. Something rose in Stiles, like an odd mix of possessiveness and jealousy that he didn't really want to examine too closely, and suddenly he couldn't stand being left out of the conversation any longer. "I want to talk to him," he blurted.

Derek froze. He'd paced around to the side of the island opposite Stiles, and Stiles did his best to glare determinedly over the forgotten food and cooking supplies that separated them.

As soon as the words had left Stiles' mouth he regretted them. He didn't really want to talk to Peter; the guy creeped him out, and everything Peter said somehow sounded like it was both a threat and an invitation to bed. But now that Stiles was thinking about it, much as the thought gave him the heebie-jeebies, he and Peter did now have one very major thing in common. Derek had opened his mouth to protest, but Stiles held out his hand insistently, and after glowering unhappily at him, Derek reluctantly handed the phone over.

"Do you remember being dead?" Stiles asked, not bothering the pleasantries on the principle that nothing was pleasant when talking to Peter.

"Stiles, tactful as ever," Peter answered gracefully. If Stiles' question had caught him off guard, nothing in his voice showed it. "I am sorry to be missing all the excitement. It sounds like you've been having a very busy week."

Stiles bit the inside of his cheek with impatience. "What happened when you died?" he pressed. "Where did you go?"

The playful drawl left Peter's voice, and Stiles could almost _hear_ a dark cloud crossing Peter's features. "I think you already know," he said, voice low. "It's terrible there, isn't it? With the darkness pressing in all around you. Everything so dark and cold and empty."

Stiles remembered, all too well, and he shuddered at Peter's words. But somehow, in a strange way, it was a relief to hear Peter talk about it. He hadn't dreamed it, it hadn't been just some hallucination caused by chemicals released by his dying brain. If Peter knew, if Peter had been there too, it was real. The flashbacks, the nightmares, the tremors of memory that struck him at odd moments, those were real too. It shouldn't have been comforting, but somehow it was.

"How did you come back?" Stiles asked. Peter had come back different, certainly; he'd come back a beta instead of an alpha. But he'd come back _himself_. Maybe there had been something Peter had done that was missing in Stiles' resurrection, some explanation as to why Stiles had come back wrong.

"It wasn't that hard." There was a dryness in Peter's voice that belied sarcasm. "I formed a bond with that beautiful girl, Lydia, before I died. It was her angelic voice that called out to me, pushed back the darkness and anchored me to the living world. Through our bond, her life force strengthened me, and I used that strength to infiltrate her mind. And, well, you know the rest."

Stiles shook his head; that did him no good. He didn't have a bond with Lydia. He hadn't heard any voices calling out to him either. Though there had been a smell, one that tickled at something he couldn't name in the deep recesses of him memory. He almost got lost in that thought, but Peter was talking again.

"I always knew you were special, Stiles." His voice whispered through the little speaker, like a snake on silk; like a threat and a promise and something darker, more primal. "I could see it in you the moment we first met. Perhaps I was wrong." His voice had turned thoughtful, musing. "Perhaps you wouldn't have made a good werewolf. Because you aren't, you know. No, you're something different, something... miraculous. And maybe it was always meant to be so."

Stiles couldn't listen to any more. He felt weirdly soiled just listening to Peter's crazy. He held the phone away from him at arm's length like it had become contaminated, and after a pause Derek took it from him. He didn't bother saying goodbye to Peter, just ended the call. Stiles felt vaguely satisfied by that.

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Stiles was trying to process the conversation; not that he'd learned anything all that useful. So Peter had gone the same place he had, and used Lydia as an anchor to pull himself back. That didn't do anything to explain what brought Stiles back. He glanced at Derek, uncomfortably aware that the werewolf had heard the entire conversation. Derek wasn't quite looking at him, taking extra care to put his phone back in his pocket.

"I'm sorry," Derek muttered, feeling Stiles looking at him.

Stiles blinked, caught off guard. "For what?"

"Calling him." Derek shrugged, beginning to convulsively shift the bags on the counter around. "Telling him what happened. I thought... I thought maybe he'd heard of something like this before. That maybe he'd know what was happening to you."

"But he didn't," Stiles surmised, based on Derek's end of the earlier conversation. Derek shook his head in confirmation. Stile swallowed and nodded. "Guess I really am special," he mumbled, but there was no humor or cheer in it.

"We'll figure it out," Derek said firmly, looking up to meet Stiles' eyes. There was a grim determination in his gaze, and something deeper, something that was almost desperation. "We'll find a way to fix it."

"To fix me," Stiles corrected. His shoulders drooped dejectedly. It was really, truly starting to hit him; somehow, he'd come back from the dead _wrong_. He wasn't supposed to exist, not anymore, but he did and what did that make him? A freak of nature. An abomination.

Derek made a sound that Stiles couldn't identify, but it sounded like hurt. Then, suddenly, Derek was just there. Between one blink and the next he'd moved around the island and crowded into Stiles' personal space. Stiles' knees separated automatically and Derek's hips fit snuggly between them and before Stiles really had the chance to process what was happening Derek was gripping his face and tilting it up so that their eyes met. His hands were strong and solid and warm, almost feverish, framing Stiles’ face and Derek’s own face was abruptly so close Stiles could have counted the flecks of gold in his eyes had Stiles’ brain been functioning on a level capable of processing numbers. Stiles’ breath caught and stuck in his chest in a way that made him feel like, if he tried to force it free, something would rip and tear, like a shirt caught on something sharp. The despair that had been taking root in Stiles' mind suddenly had to compete with an entirely different feeling; a hunger, fierce and sharp somewhere below his belly that strained toward Derek's warmth. He lifted his hand, his broken hand, automatically until it rested on Derek's chest. He wasn't sure if he meant to push Derek away, or pull him closer, but in the end he did neither, instead just resting his hand there on Derek's chest, feeling the heat soaking through his shirt.

It wasn't enough. The cloth of Derek's shirt felt too rough, and too fragile. Stiles needed skin. He needed flesh and muscle, sinew and blood. He needed to feel Derek's life against his fingertips and to drink it in.

There was an intensity in Derek’s eyes that was foreign and alarming. His pupils expanded as Stiles watched until they all but took over Derek's irises, leaving only a thin ring of gray-blue and suddenly Stiles felt like he was falling into those endless pits of black. Pits of black- _darkness, absolute, cold, aching, screaming, shapeless fingers reaching, clawing_ \- a scream was rising in the back of Stiles’ throat. Without even being consciously aware of moving it, Stiles' hand was no longer resting on Derek's chest but slipping up underneath the hem of his shirt, seeking skin. He felt a shiver run all the way down Derek's spine, their bodies pressed close enough together that the shiver seemed to reverberate in Stiles' own chest. 

But it wasn't enough and the scream was still clawing at Stiles' insides. It had nearly made it to his lips when suddenly it was blocked. By Derek’s lips. Derek's lips which were surprisingly soft, a sharp contrast to the roughness of his hands that Stiles cupped Stiles' face.

They were just suddenly kissing, and Stiles didn’t know what was happening. Except it wasn’t kissing, not exactly; there was nothing sweet, nothing tender, not even passionate. It was all force and desperation, sucking and biting and straining and grasping. The scream vanished, like it had never been, but in its place something else rose, something darker, hungrier. Stiles was now grasping at Derek's chest, fingernails scraping against firm muscle; there should have been pain, his broken fingers should have ached with every curl but they didn't. 

This wasn't normal, some part of his brain tried to warn. Stiles didn't have a whole lot of experience what normal kissing was supposed to be, but he knew it wasn't this. But Derek was warm, so warm and he tasted sweet like fresh spring dew and the pulse of a rushing heart and Stiles wasn’t sure how he knew what those things tasted like but that’s what Derek’s mouth was and he wanted it, _needed_ it more than air.

Stiles had no recollection of either of them moving, but now he was the one gripping Derek’s face. He was the one sucking and biting and pushing his way into Derek’s mouth, tasting, needing, _taking_. The hunger grew, ravenous, destructive; it was taking over his mind, clouding out every other thought. Derek’s hands were iron bands around his upper arms, clinging to him, pulling him closer. His mouth was open, receptive, giving over everything to Stiles. And Stiles took it, savoring it, so sweet he thought he might get drunk on it, letting it fill him up though it was never enough. The blood was singing in his veins and there were fireworks in his brain and he wondered if this was what it was like to get high.

But then he opened his eyes; he hadn’t even realized he’d closed them. Derek’s eyes were wide, and huge in a face that was suddenly too sharp, too pale, too angular. It wasn’t possible, wasn’t human and neither was the way that his pupils had taken over his entire eyes turning them black as night. His face was utterly bloodless, so pale it was no longer white but gray, like a three day old corpse. And his hands were just as a bad, worse, veins standing out horrifically against translucent skin and tendons straining with the force of his death grip on Stiles’ arms.

The scream was back but this time it was his own and Stiles wrenched out of Derek’s grip so hard he was sure something had broken. Derek fell over at the sudden loss of Stiles holding him up, crumpling until his fall was half-aborted as he slumped against the stool Stiles had previously been sitting on. Derek was panting as though he’d just run fifty miles, his whole body swaying and leaning dangerously sideways as he tried futilely to straighten up.

Stiles backed away from him, like someone trapped in a horror movie of his own making. Derek caught his motion on some level, groaning and reaching for him. “St-” the sound was rough, so harsh it hurt and Stiles almost clapped his hands over his ears to hide from it. There was a little bit of iris back in Derek’s eyes again, enough that he could be visibly struggling to focus on Stiles’, still backing away, shape.

“I-I’m... I’m sorry,” he stammered, his own voice by comparison high and thready and nearly on a pitch only dogs could hear. “I-I didn’t- I d-don’t-” but he didn’t finish those sentences because there was nothing to finish them with. I didn’t mean to? I don’t know what happened? What was the point of saying it, when Derek could barely hold himself up and was reaching for him like Stiles was his only lifeline. He had done this, somehow, he had taken Derek who was all iron strength and lethal claws and primal power and broken him down into this weak, crawling thing, helpless as a kitten.

Horror was a flash flood of blood pumping in his ears, heart trying to batter its way through his ribs to escape his chest, and he was sure he was going to vomit again. His instinct was to turn and run, to get away before he could do any more damage, yet he was frozen; rooted to the spot and unable to leave Derek alone like this. But Derek’s color was returning, he was still alarmingly pale but at least he no longer looked like a corpse. And he was fighting, working to keep his legs under him, claws digging into the already worn surface of the stool to prevent himself from keeling over entirely. It was enough to unfreeze Stiles, enough to start him backing away again.

“Stiles, wait-” Derek tried, making a desperate lunge for him. Stiles heard Derek’s body crash to the ground as he fell short, but didn’t see it because he was running. He ran until he burst through the charred front door and didn’t stop until he was in his Jeep, not stopping to question how it had gotten there, and zooming away in a blur of squealing tires and spraying dirt.

It didn’t even occur to him until he was several miles away that he was gripping the steering wheel so tight, his knuckles were creaking; all ten of them. All ten perfectly healed, bloodless, unbroken knuckles.

________________________________________

He ended up at the animal clinic, though he had no idea if that was because it was closest, or so that he could talk to Dr. Deaton, or simply because he knew Scott would be there and, even if nothing really got fixed, things were just always better with Scott by his side. Whatever his motivation for coming here though, he didn’t move right away.

His heart was still pounding so hard in his throat, it hurt, and his hands were shaking. He took the time to fish his phone off of the floor where it had fallen, for the fifth time, somewhere along the way after he’d finally managed to call one of the pack. He had no idea which of them he’d even called, just that it had taken several times to get the right buttons pushed and when the call had finally connected he’d snapped three words into the receiver and hung up again; “Get to Derek.” He knew that if Derek was really, seriously in trouble, his pack would have been rushing to him already, but he felt better knowing that someone would be checking on him.

He slumped forward, thumping his forehead against the steering wheel. He just couldn’t... couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. His head was reeling, consistent coherent thought just beyond his reach. Derek’s face kept flashing through his mind, looking like something out of a horror movie. _He_ had done that, whatever that was, he had made Derek look like that. He didn’t understand exactly what had happened, or how, or why, but he did somehow know instinctually that it would have killed Derek if he hadn’t stopped. He just couldn’t handle that knowledge, couldn’t bring himself to think it through because, whatever conclusion he came to, it couldn’t be good.

But of course, the less he wanted to think about it, the more he thought about it. His brain just kept replaying it over and over in his mind. Most of it was blurry, but about a few things he was certain: Derek had kissed him first, also Derek had definitely not been pushing him away, and most importantly, most nauseatingly, he had been _taking_ something from Derek. He’d been taking Derek’s life.

Memories of webpages he’d come across somewhere in his various long hours of research swam to the surface of his mind; stories of blood-thirsty old European nobility and lecherous demons, corpses rising from the grave to feed on the living. Derek had said that vampires didn't exist, but what if... he’d been feeding on Derek, there was no other way to put it. He remembered feeling hunger, remembered it being ravenous and consuming and how Derek had tasted so sweet. Remembering it made him shiver, made something clench up inside him and ache with desire. He could still taste Derek on his tongue, still feel his life force zinging through his veins. Traditional vampires fed on blood, but there were other things, things that he’d found allusions to, older things that fed on other types of life that were hinted at in some of the more serious texts he’d found. 

_‘So what am I? Some kind of-of zombie-ghost-thing, not dead but not alive?’_ The words he’d thrown at Derek came back to him; words that had been thoughtless and hysterical at the time. But what if it was true? His heart was beating, he _felt_ alive, but what if he wasn’t really? What if he was just some parasite now, stuck here, neither living nor dead, doomed suck the life of others?

He made it out of the Jeep just in time for his grilled cheese to make a reappearance. He stayed there for a while, hunched over with only the Jeep to keep him upright, breathing shallowly through his mouth. When eventually he did look up, it was because he could feel Scott radiating concern at him from across the parking lot. Taking a deep, shaky breath, he managed to get his limbs under control in time to straighten up as Scott approached him.

“Derek called,” Scott said, by way of greeting. Stiles' guts twisted and he couldn’t decided whether to be relieved about the confirmation that Derek was okay or just be even more nauseous about the whole thing. He also couldn’t tell if the seriousness of Scott’s expression meant that Derek had been his usual non-forthcoming self, or if Derek had told him everything; he wasn’t sure which would be worse.

He swallowed, running a still shaking hand over his face. Now that he was here, facing Scott with all his earnest concern, he had no choice but to think about it, to try and explain what had happened and face what it might mean. “I don’t... I don’t know what happened,” he fumbled, voice cracking.

“Come inside,” Scott urged, looping an arm around Stiles’ shoulders that was warm and solid and nice. But then Derek’s face flashed behind his eyes again and he flinched, pulling sharply away; what if he hurt Scott too? Well he had, inadvertently, by pulling away, but Scott’s wounded expression was better than accidentally doing to him whatever he’d done to Derek.

“I’m sorry, you know, about earlier,” Stiles mumbled, as he trailed Scott inside, keeping a careful distance between them just in case. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” Scott dismissed, “And hey, you haven’t tried to literally eat my face or anything yet, so I figure I still owe you.” It probably said something about his life that Stiles was actually comforted by that.

A strange shiver ran down Stiles’ spine as they entered through the clinic’s back door. Scott had been working there long enough, and Stiles had visited enough for the place to feel familiar, and if the smell of antiseptic and the racket of the animals weren’t comforting exactly, they were at least mundane to him; usually. But now he felt jittery, panicky and out of control, which he probably would have felt anywhere, but somehow being in the clinic was just grating on him all the more.

Dr. Deaton didn’t appear to be in the vicinity, and Stiles wasn’t sure if he was relieved that they had privacy or not. His head was reeling and he leaned limply against the counter to hold himself up while Scott faced him expectantly.

“Everything was fine,” he started, trying to give some semblance of calmness and coherency, “but then he was just _there_ with his face- and my face- and the kissing.” His attempt failed and he devolved into flailing helplessly, words tumbling over one another.

“Wait, kissing?” Scott’s whole face scrunched up and that answered Stiles’ previous question; Derek, helpful as ever, hadn’t actually told Scott anything. It would have been pretty hard to explain the whole life-sucking thing without mentioning the lips-touching thing.

“Yes, no, not exactly,” he fumbled. “God I don’t know, okay? It was weird, and terrifying, and sort of gross, and happened so fast-”

“The kissing?” Scott’s brain seemed to be stuck.

“No. I mean, not at first. Not the _kissing_ kissing part that was-” Stiles flailed his arms around a little because he actually had no idea how to describe what it had been. “But then it just... I don’t know, it went _wrong_ and-and I couldn’t help it and I think I almost killed him.”

“How?” Scott was trying, visibly, to keep up with Stiles’ rambling, and under any other circumstance it would have been adorable.

“I don’t know!”

“Well, calm down,” Scott interjected, cutting him off. “Shouting isn’t going to help anything.”

Stiles stopped and took a deep breath, which turned out to be a not so good thing since he choked on it and proceeded to hiccup several times.

“Well, the good news is that you didn’t kill him, I guess,” Scott offered weakly after a minute. “He sounded fine on the phone. I mean, not fine, but you know, how he normally sounds. Maybe a little winded...”

That was a relief, but Stiles just shook his head, not terribly comforted. Scott was fishing for something else helpful to say when Dr. Deaton interrupted them, his voice floating over from somewhere in the general direction of the kennels. “Scott, could you come help me for a moment.”

Scott hesitated, giving Stiles an apologetic look, but Stiles waved it off and Scott went to see what the vet wanted. Left on his own, Stiles fidgeted, eyes roaming for something to distract him. The room was pretty much the same as it always was, lined by cabinets, an organized smattering of medical implements, large metal examining table in the middle. Something about the size of a cat or a small dog lay on the table covered by a sheet, which Stiles was trying not to think too much about.

He remembered the stark pallor of Derek’s skin under the harsh fluorescent lights as Derek ordered him to cut off his arm. He wondered vaguely how their lives would be different if he had, if Scott hadn’t made it back in time with the bullet. Those moments when Derek passed out, when Stiles started to think they hadn’t made it in time, that was the worst Stiles had ever seen Derek; until today.

Stiles couldn’t help but notice that there was still the faintest of scorch marks where Derek had lit the wolfsbane on fire. He gravitated toward the table, fingers brushing the spot absently and suddenly his heart rate picked up again, though he had no idea why. Blood rushing in his ears, he realized that there was a strange tingling in the tips of his fingers and somehow he was suddenly on the other side of the table where the sheet covered shape lay. He reached out to the shape, fingers trembling slightly while a removed part of himself screamed at him not to touch it, but like watching a horror movie he couldn’t seem to stop it from happening.

Whatever was under the sheet was cool to the touch at first. There was no life there, no heartbeat, no warmth. But as soon as Stiles’ hand rested fully on it, a jolt ran through him, like a spark of lightning and the sheet twitched. Then it wasn’t just a spark, but a full on current and the thing was definitely squirming. Stiles jerked back with a yelp, overbalancing and crashing against the cabinets. But it was too late, the thing was still moving, shifting and snuffling around under the blanket until a little white, wagging tail poked out, followed by a curly hair covered butt. It was swaying and stumbling like a drunkard as it struggled to squirm free of the sheet and it might have been cute were it not for the fact that that dog had been stone cold dead just a minute ago. Stiles was freaking out.

The noise had drawn Scott’s attention and he came rushing back in, only to stop dead in the doorway at the sight before him. The dog made a pathetic little half yip as it stumbled over the edge of the table and landed with a thump on the floor. It didn’t seem particularly fazed though as it got its paws back until itself and started to meander around in aimless circles, making a distressed, confused sort of whine. Dr. Deaton was in the doorway now too, peering over Scott’s shoulder and they were all watching with a sort of horrified, morbid fascination. 

It lasted for about five minutes, during which Stiles was too shocked to move and the dog sort of limped around disorientedly and stumbled into things before eventually it just keeled over and went still. They stared at it for a long time, but it didn’t move again, a little bit of blood dribbling out of the corner of its mouth.

The silence had grown so loud that it broke with a startling crack when Dr. Deaton finally spoke. “Well, that was interesting,” he said mildly. 

The edge of the counter was digging into Stiles’ back as he half leaned against it and half pressed himself into it in order to be as far away from the corpse of the dog. His eyes were wide and his breathing shallow as he finally managed to tear his gaze away from the sight to glance at Scott and the veterinarian. “I didn’t mean to,” he said weakly.

“No, I’m sure you didn’t,” Dr. Deaton assured, moving around Scott to approach the corpse. He crouched down, observing it for a moment. He gained no response when he poked it carefully, so he lifted it back onto the table and covered it with the sheet again. “It seems you’ve been having an exciting few days lately, Stiles.”

Stiles’ eyes shot to Scott, unsure if they’d been talking about him or if Dr. Deaton was just doing that thing where he just sort of knew about whatever was going on. Scott gave him a rueful look and shrugged.

“I think that’s putting it a bit mildly,” Stiles rebutted, cautiously edging closer to the table, though he kept his hands firmly behind his back. “Do you know what’s going on?” Because the good doctor seemed to have a strange habit of knowing more than they did and if he had any insight on this situation, he’d damn well better share it.

“I know you’re not a werewolf,” he answered absently.

“Yeah, we’d sort of figured that one out on our own, thanks,” Stiles muttered dryly. He eyed the sheet covered lump over Dr. Deaton’s shoulder warily. “Is it, I mean, it’s you know, dead again, right?” he asked.

“It would seem so,” the vet confirmed. “At least he was a victim of old age. Imagine the mess if he’d been the result of a car accident,” he mused. Even Stiles thought this was a somewhat inappropriate time for humor.

Scott too had edged closer and he reached out to put a reassuring hand on Stiles’ shoulder. “We’ll figure it out,” he started to say, but Stiles saw the hand coming out of the corner of his eye and jerked back violently.

“Don’t,” he warned, somewhere between a snap and a squeak. “Look, first Derek touched me and I almost killed him, then I touched the dog and it went all Frankenstein, who knows what could happen next?” he explained before Scott could give him a full dose of the hurt puppy eyes.

Scott still looked upset, but reason prevailed and he withdrew his hand all the same. “So what now?” he asked, eyes flickering from Stiles to Dr. Deaton and back, hopeful that one of them might have the answer; Stiles certainly didn’t.

Dr. Deaton eyed them both and Stiles had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being evaluated in some way, like his worthiness was being measured. “Sorry boys, I can’t tell you,” he said at last, though notably he didn’t say that he didn’t know. “But I can tell you to be careful. The forces you’re dealing with are dangerous.” His eyes lingered on Stiles, and there was a sort of prickling in the back of his mind that made his skin crawl and gave him the strange urge to sneeze.

Well, that was extremely helpful. Thanks a lot.


	6. Chapter 6

________________________________________  
Chapter 6  
________________________________________

"Mr. Stilinski."

Stiles blinked, the pen cap he'd been chewing on falling from his mouth. Mr. Harris and a few of his classmates were staring at him expectantly and he stared blankly back. He legitimately had no idea what they were waiting for.

Coming to school that day had been a bad idea. He'd known it even when he'd dragged himself out of bed that morning. But after a seemingly endless, sleepless night he just couldn't stand being in his room any longer and he hadn't come up with a better alternative. He'd skipped too much already that week anyway.

Mr. Harris was still staring at him. Stiles tried to remember what had happened in the last few minutes, but he came up completely blank. Obviously, he hadn't been paying attention, but whatever he had been thinking about had utterly fled his mind. That was a little disconcerting.

Stiles knew from experience that Mr. Harris was fully willing to stall the entire class for as long as necessary just for an opportunity to embarrass him. "Do you need something?" Stiles asked eventually. He wasn't trying to be funny, exactly, as he had absolutely no energy left for humor; he was just tired of being stared at.

Mr. Harris did not approve. He said something cutting and completely inappropriate that implied Stiles had less intelligence than an ape, but Stiles had already stopped paying attention again. Luckily, Greenberg chose that moment to do something spectacularly stupid in the back of the room, diverting Mr. Harris' attention and saving Stiles from yet more detentions.

But the day wasn't even half over yet and Stiles' nerves were utterly frazzled. Less than twenty-four hours ago he'd nearly killed Derek, and then temporarily reanimated a dog; two of the most traumatizing events of his life thus far. He figured they probably fell somewhere in between dying and getting beaten up by a geriatric psychopath. But worst of all, he didn't know why he'd almost killed Derek, or how he'd zombie-fied the dog, except for the fact that he'd touched both of them, and then things had exploded out of control. Since that was the only common denominator he could think of, he figured he was safe as long as he managed to make it all the way through the day without coming into physical contact with anyone who was, or had once been, alive. It was, unsurprisingly, exhausting.

So by the time lunch came around he was pretty much just done. The pack was waiting for him; all the betas, plus Lydia, sitting at their usual table with their heads bent together. He just knew they were talking about him. Not that he was surprised, or could really blame them. He was still halfway across the cafeteria when the wolves stopped and looked up at him, Lydia catching up a second later. Stiles' stomach twisted a little. Their expressions weren't hostile, exactly, but they were wary, and serious, and Stiles so just did not want to deal with it. But, he couldn't hide from them forever.

So he tilted his chin up and marched the rest of the way across the room. He slammed his tray down on the table, with a little more force than necessary. Lydia and Boyd both scooted aside to give him plenty of room.

"So, Derek kissed me," Stiles announced. "Then I almost killed him, and temporarily animated a dog. I think I win most exciting week." They all stared at him, faces showing a variety of wide-eyed and shocked. Stiles started tearing into his chicken with cathartic viciousness.

No one spoke for several minutes. Stiles ate, and the others stared. Stiles did his best to ignore them. Finally, it was Boyd who broke the silence. "Pay up," he said, holding an outstretched palm toward Jackson.

"No way," Jackson denied. "Kissing does not equate to hooking up."

Erica shrugged. "It's only a matter of time." She shot a very smug grin in Stiles' direction that made him feel vaguely dirty. It still took him an embarrassingly long time to figure out what they were talking about.

"Wait, you guys bet on me and Derek-" He couldn't quite bring himself to finish that sentence. His relationship with Derek had always been complicated. He tried not to think about it too much; apparently the pack didn't employ the same policy.

"It's not like he's pining for you or anything," Isaac deadpanned. Stiles blinked at him; he legitimately couldn't tell if Isaac was being sarcastic or not.

"Seriously guys, is this really the part of what's going on right now that you want to focus on?" Scott complained. His nose was scrunched up and he looked vaguely nauseous, which made Stiles remember, with a vindictive sort of satisfaction, exactly how much Scott owed him after all of the Allison talk in the past year.

"Scott's right, this is serious," Lydia cut in, practical as always, before Jackson could make whatever retort he'd been opening his mouth to say. She turned to Stiles. Her face showed just how important this was, which, weirdly, Stiles found comforting. At some point during the past few months his stomach had stopped flipping at the sight of Lydia, and his knees stopped going weak at the scent of her shampoos, and he'd lost track of some of the details of his fifteen year plan. But her sheer awesomeness had never dimmed.

"Well, I'm pretty sure we now know he's not a werewolf," Boyd supplied helpfully. He looked at Stiles like he was studying, or maybe appraising him. It made Stiles vaguely uncomfortable.

"He's not human either," Isaac interjected. Stiles was definitely uncomfortable with the way Isaac was looking at him, but there was an undercurrent to his tone that Stiles couldn't quite decipher.

"That explains the smell," Jackson grunted, like somehow Stiles' odor personally offended him.

"Smell?" Stiles protested, barely resisting the urge to sniff himself on reflex. He'd definitely put on deodorant that morning.

"I don't smell anything," Lydia assured him, which meant at least he didn't have to worry about humans thinking he stank.

"It's not a bad scent," Erica tempered, which was unusually nice for her. "It's just..."

"Weird," Boyd supplied. "You don't smell like wolf. Which makes sense now that we know you're not a werewolf, but didn't before."

"Except you still smell like pack," Erica butted back in.

"And no one thought it was important to tell me that I smell?" Stiles aimed the brunt of his indignation toward his supposedly best friend. Scott squirmed.

"I thought it was a side effect. Of, you know, the whole... death, thing," Scott defended weakly. "I thought maybe it'd wear off."

"That's what the other part of it is!" Jackson exclaimed, like it was a puzzle that had been driving him crazy. Comprehension dawned across Erica, Boyd, and Isaac's faces too. Scott, who Stiles knew had had to get used to the scent of death at the clinic, just look at Stiles apologetically.

Stiles couldn't help feeling gratified that Lydia looked just as left out as he felt. There were definitely perks to not being the only non-werewolf in the group. But she pulled herself together quickly. "So, Stiles smells like pack, and... death," she summarized, eyes narrowed as she considered that information.

"But he's not pack," Jackson added.

"He's not a werewolf," Scott corrected, a little too sharply.

"He almost killed Derek when they kissed," Lydia continued, ignoring the other two. She was focused on the chipped table top without really seeing it, and Stiles could all but see her working to slot the pieces into place. "And then brought the dog back to life. Partially at least." Stiles was more or less following her up to that point; it made sense that there was some sort of connection between what had happened with Derek and what had happened with the dog.

But apparently Jackson did too, because he chose that moment to crow in delight. "Does that mean he kissed the dog too?" Jackson asked, and Stiles could feel his glee like a drill bit digging into his temples. "McCall, please tell me you got a picture of him kissing the dog."

Lydia whipped around to glower at Jackson, and just like that the moment was gone and whatever conclusion she might have been coming to was lost. "Jackson!" she snarled, and Stiles was pretty sure immunity or not she was about to grow fangs to tear into Jackson with. "Can you be any more of a child?"

She pushed away from the table and too her feet. But as she swung her leg over the bench she stumbled a little, and reached out automatically to steady herself. Except, the nearest thing for her to steady herself on happened to be Stiles. He saw her hand coming out of the corner of his eyes and next thing he knew he was throwing himself backwards so hard he ended up sprawled on his back on the cafeteria floor with his legs still half hooked over the bench. It was a pretty spectacular fall, even by his standards.

Several of the students sitting at the nearby tables stopped to stare at him. A few of them sniggered as they turned back to their own petty dramas. The pack, however, continued to stare at him. Lydia, who'd managed to catch herself despite his wild flail, automatically reached down to help him up. "I'm sorry," she started, "I didn't think-"

But he scrambled away from her. His chest tightened and his breath came in sharp and short as Derek's face, hollow and bleached like a week old corpse, flashed through his mind. "Don't!" he snapped. Lydia pulled back her hand, looking hurt, and Stiles regretted snapping at her. But it was for the best; he couldn't risk hurting her the way he'd hurt Derek. Derek had healed, she probably wouldn't. "Just... don't," he added more softly.

The bell calling them to sixth period rang as Stiles was picking himself up. He'd never been happier to hear it.  
________________________________________  
By the time the school day was over, Stiles wanted nothing more than a few hours of normalcy. With Scott at his side as they headed for the Jeep, Stiles was looking forward to an afternoon of eating and playing video games with his best friend, nothing more. No monsters, no death, no magic. Normalcy.

But somewhere along the line, Stiles stopped getting to have nice things. He knew what was coming before he saw her, like a anticipatory groan building in his throat. Scott's nose flared and his eyes lit up in a way that was entirely too familiar and had nothing to do with bro-time. Sure enough, moments later Allison came around the side of the administration building and started heading towards them. 

Her face lit up too when she saw Scott, though it was a little more reserved and tentative. She altered her course and walked straight over to them. She smiled shyly, her attention focused almost entirely on Scott, though she did at least give Stiles' a courtesy nod. "Hey Scott, Stiles," she greeted.

"Hey, Allison," Scott answered, eloquently. No one said anything else for a long minute. Scott and Allison somehow managed to avoid each other's eyes while simultaneously staring balefully at each other; meanwhile Stiles bounced on the balls of his feet impatiently.

"Not that this isn't scintillating conversation or anything," Stiles eventually gave in and prodded, "But did you need something?"

Allison blinked. "Oh, right," she fumbled, blushing, "I just, um, was thinking maybe you and I could get some coffee or something? You know, talk." Obviously, she was talking exclusively to Scott. 

"I'd love too," Scott answered automatically, a dopey grin splitting his face. But then he stopped, grin drooping. He glanced at Stiles, as though just remembering he was there. "But I can't today. We have plans. Sorry." Mentally, Stiles gave Scott points for remembering.

She looked a little crestfallen, but covered it with an embarrassed smile. "Of course, I understand." She was already starting to back away. "Another day then?"

"Yeah, definitely," Scott agreed. He stared after her longingly as she turned and walked away.

Stiles sighed as he watched them both and his pre-planned afternoon faded out of his future. "Go," he huffed, gesturing after Allison dismissively.

Scott blinked and shook his head. "What? No, I'm hanging out with you-"

"And now all you'll do all afternoon is mope and swoon over her. Just go, it's fine." It was disappointing, yeah. But it was also about damn time Scott and Allison started working it out, and that was a cause Stiles supported.

"I shouldn't-" Scott hesitated; meanwhile Allison walked further and further away.

"Seriously, dude, I don't need a babysitter. Okay? I'll be fine. I'm sick of you pining over her anyway." He gestured insistently.

"I'll make it up to you, I swear," Scott promised. His whole face had lit up and his body was already starting to tilt in the direction Allison had gone like he was pulled to her by some gravitational force.

"Yeah you will," Stiles confirmed. "Now for that last time, go!" Scott trotted off to catch up with Allison, and Stiles gave himself about a thousand points for being an awesome best friend.

As he drove himself home, he decided that maybe it was for the best. Scott had been doing an awful lot of hovering since Stiles had died; and besides, video games and eating was just as easily a solitary activity.

But by the time he got home, his thoughts had turned to other things. He did stop in the kitchen for a snack, but then headed straight up to his room and booted up his computer. He'd spent the entire ride home turning everything that had happened in the past week over and over in his head; none of it made sense.

He wasted a few minutes checking his e-mail and facebook automatically, clicking the right buttons without really thinking about it or seeing the screen. But then he opened his bookmarks and pulled up a few of the websites that had provided him useful information on the supernatural before. They already knew that the bite didn't always result in a new werewolf; examples being the kanima and Lydia's still unexplained immunity. Whatever was happening to him was probably something similar, he reasoned.

Except, no matter how many variants of 'werewolf bite gone wrong' or 'side effects of not becoming a werewolf' he tried, he found absolutely nothing that seemed to match what was happening to him. He wasted hours hunched in front of his computer screen, shifting through seemingly endless webpages, and at the end of it had learned absolutely nothing new.

Disheartened, he eventually wandered downstairs for a drink. He was seriously considering reneging on letting Scott out of hanging out with him and calling him. But before he could give in and reach for the phone, he happened to glance out of the front window and noticed a familiar car parked across the street. A familiar car in which sat a familiar head of long blonde hair. Thoughts of calling Scott forgotten, he flung open the front door and marched barefoot across the street.

It wasn't like he could really blame the pack for being nervous. In all fairness, the last time the bite had gone wrong a lot of people had died. And considering the fact that he'd almost added Derek to the body count just the day before; really, he should have been surprised if they _weren't_ keeping an eye on him.

Obviously Erica saw, or heard, him coming. By the time Stiles rapped sharply on the car window she was slouching in the front street with a vague air of embarrassment. Reluctantly she rolled down the window.

"Erica," Stiles greeted, leaning against the doorframe with effected casualty.

"Stiles," she answered. She looked at him with an impressive combination of defiance and apology. 

"Practicing your stalking, I see. Probably for the best, since you sort of suck at it." He wasn't angry, which was sort of surprising since it seemed like angry was pretty much his default these past few days. He was more amused than anything, and in a weird way a little bit touched. He wasn't going to try not to analyze that one too closely. "You know it helps if you at least try to be subtle about it."

"We're just being careful," Erica defended. She gave him her best impression of sincere doe eyes; they weren't very good. And even if they had been, thanks to Scott, Stiles had developed an immunity to most wide-eyed, innocent expressions.

"Well," he sighed, "if you're going to be obvious about it, you might as well come inside." He didn't wait for her to answer, or look back to see if she was following as he headed back to his house. But when he reached the porch and held the door open for her, she was right behind him. He had no idea what had prompted him to invite her in, or what to do now that he had.

"Uh, thirsty?" he offered, more for lack of anything else to say than politeness.

"Sure, thanks." She looked as awkward and uncertain as Stiles felt. He went into the kitchen, retrieving his own soda and grabbing her a can too. Then they stood in the hallway for several incredibly awkward minutes, sipping their sodas and trying to look at each other without making eye contact.

"Do you like video games?" Stiles eventually blurted.

She grinned, a predatory challenge in her eyes.  
________________________________________  
It turned out, Erica was pretty good at video games, and soon enough they were both swearing enthusiastically at the screen, controllers in hand. They barely even noticed time passing as sodas and snacks were consumed and playful insults were tossed around. Somehow, after only a matter of hours, it was like they'd been friends for years.

"So you and Derek are going to get together, right?" she asked, apropos of nothing. They were between games and the controller was balancing on her knee as she tipped her head back onto the couch behind her to get the last drops of soda from her can. "You know, after we get your whole... whatever's going on sorted out."

Stiles choked. "Have you met Derek?" he asked, wheezing a little around the piece of popcorn he'd almost swallowed wrong. "He barely tolerates me. Or, at least, didn't until I..." _died_ didn't quite make it past his lips.

Erica turned her head and stared at him. Then she blinked, slowly, and continued staring at him. Stiles knew that expression, that was the you're-a-blind-idiot expression, and he thought it was totally unfair. "The thing with Derek is that you have to pay attention to what he doesn't say," she told him sagely. Stiles raised an eyebrow in mystified disbelieve and she huffed, rolling her eyes. "Okay, I take it back," she said. "You two getting together would be a terrible idea."

Stiles very much wanted to demand that she explain herself, but he was interrupted by the familiar scrap of his dad's keys against the front door.

Erica glanced at the clock. "Crap," she muttered, "I'm going to be late for dinner." She pushed herself to her feet with a grace that was totally inhuman and completely unfair. Stiles scrambled after her and almost collided with his dad in the hallway.

"Stiles," the sheriff's eyebrows were raised pointedly. "Miss Reyes. Will you be staying for dinner? I have pizza."

Erica paused, as though surprised by the offer. "I'm sorry, I can't," she answered when she'd recovered herself. "My parents are waiting."

"Well, uh, drive safe then." The Sheriff glanced suspiciously between the two of them before heading into the kitchen.

"I, um, had fun this afternoon," Erica said, hesitating in the doorway.

"Me too," Stiles agreed. He was a little surprised, but he really meant it. Strangely, a part of him didn't want Erica to go. It had been fun, in a totally normal, non-terrifying way.

She smiled, broad and genuine. "So, see you tomorrow then."

Stiles froze and reality came crashing back down around him. Right. Tomorrow. The full moon. "I don't... think I really need to," he hedged. "I mean, it's not like I'll... change." He lowered his voice, glancing uncomfortably over his shoulder to make sure his dad hadn't come back in the room. 

"Probably," Erica pointed out rationally. "Besides, you should still come. I know Derek wants you too."

"Well if _Derek_ wants it," he started, rolling his eyes. But Erica's smile had faded and she looked somehow hurt, so he stopped guiltily.

"It'll be better if you're there," she insisted. "Just come." And before Stiles could protest or ask what exactly she meant by that, she was hurrying way into the night.

Later that evening he sat staring blankly at his homework before giving in and reaching for his phone. 

You said full moon parties are werewolf only. I'm not a werewolf.

He typed the message in and sent it to Derek. He didn't get an answer until hours later when he was in bed and already half asleep.

Come anyway.  
________________________________________

By the time the full moon rose the next night, Stiles entirely fed up with werewolves. He hadn't minded the babysitting so much the day before when it had just been him and Erica hanging out. But ever since he'd woken up that morning to Boyd lounging casually in his backyard, he hadn't gotten a moment of peace. They'd switched out throughout the day, taking turns hovered over him constantly. and the situation was made even worse by the fact that the moon made them all particularly short tempered and volatile. And, he kept catching them staring at him when they thought he wasn’t looking. They skirted awkwardly around him, to avoid touching him; which he both supported and insisted on, but still, it wasn’t a good feeling. Dread was a cold, festering lump in the pit of his stomach and his temper was constantly running thin.

He was so done that he chose to plant himself firmly on the couch furthest away from the rest of the pack, despite the fact that it was the mustiest and had some of the most suspicious stains, and sulk, slouched down and arms crossed. They were all gathered in the basement of the Hale house, the part which had so far seen the most productive renovation. For the most part it was a large, stark room with cinderblock walls and suspiciously archaic looking chains dangling from them. In typical Derek fashion, it was straightforward and practical, though thankfully none of the wolves really needed to be chained up on the full moon anymore; even Scott had more or less learned control, though Derek still insisted on them all gathering together with solid walls and a heavy steel door between them and any humans. There had been some debate about Stiles’ presence this month, where both very good points that Stiles was not a werewolf, and yet did not appear to be human were made. Derek, of course, had won and so there Stiles was, whether he liked it or not.

At least there was more to the room than cement and chains, which Stiles suspected was more the influence of Isaac and Erica than any thoughtfulness on Derek’s part. But the room had been furnished with some dilapidated, hand-me-down couches and chairs, much like parts of the house above, and the rough cement floor had been spread with several large, mismatched rugs. As far as lairs - dens? - went it was pretty cozy; or so Stiles assumed, since he’s thus far managed to avoid visiting too many lairs or dens.

The wolves were arguing, or rather, Jackson was and the louder he got the harder he was to ignore, though Stiles continued to try. “I’m going to tell Danny,” Jackson said for the twelfth time.

“No,” Derek said simply, also for the twelfth time.

“Why not? Don’t you get more powerful the more of us there are?” he argued. The tactic hadn’t worked any of the other five times he’d tried it either.

Derek didn’t deign to respond.

“He’s already involved anyway,” Jackson continued, never one to give up, “He had a right to know.”

Erica was rolling her eyes up at Boyd from her position draped across his lap on one of the other couches and Boyd responded by smiling back at her, a look that was all teeth and wasn’t at all cute, except to Erica it seemed.

“Scott gets to have Stiles,” Jackson threw in. That was new.

“Woah, hey, why do we have to bring Stiles into this?” he protested, unable to resist being at least partially pulled from his sulk.

“I don’t have Stiles,” Scott simultaneously argued from the other side of the room and he and Stiles shared an eye-contact-high-five.

“Stiles got to know about all this. I should be able to tell my best friend too,” Jackson explained.

“I didn’t tell him,” Scott pointed out, “He figured it out before I did.” Jackson glared at Scott, and in a matter of seconds both their eyes were glowing. It might have devolved into a full on fight if Derek hadn’t put his foot down.

“Stiles is pack,” Derek said firmly, cutting Jackson off when he opened his mouth to start arguing again. “Stiles has been pack for longer than you have, so shut your mouth before I shut it for you.”

Silence rang in the air after that declaration and Stiles couldn’t help feeling just a little bit warm and fuzzy inside. Jackson’s mouth had snapped closed and he moved off to do his own sulking in the far corner. Erica’s eyeroll had turned into a smirk and Isaac was totally doing a mental happy dance from where he lounged against the wall trying to look uninterested.

And just like that Stiles’ irritation started to fade. Maybe it was Derek’s declaration that he was pack, or maybe it was their group unity against Jackson’s asshatery, but the tension was draining out of his shoulders a little bit at a time. His sulky slouched gradually shifted into a more relaxed sprawl and he stopped glaring at the suspicious stain on the rug in front of him. The rest of the pack seemed to feel it too; Erica stretched lazily before settling her head more firmly in Boyd’s lap, and Boyd pulled out a book to read while he casually ran his fingers through her hair. Isaac gave up on the wall and decided to sprawl instead on the floor, his back leaning against the armchair Scott was sitting in, his shoulder subtly brushing Scott’s knee. Even Jackson’s prowling didn’t stay angry for long and quickly mellowed out into simply restlessness.

Time passed slowly and a comfortable silence fell over them; of course, it wasn’t real silence, the small mundane noises of Scott’s foot tapping arhythmically and Boyd turning the pages of his book were probably making it not silence at all to the wolves. But all the same, it was sort of nice. Nice enough that Stiles had started to drowse lazily when the couch cushions under him shifted slightly as Derek sat down on the couch next to him.

While Stiles had been painfully aware of Derek’s presence, he hadn’t been paying much attention to what Derek was doing; assumedly lurking somewhere in the shadows according to his typical habits. Stiles managed not to visibly startle, though all of the wolves were probably fully aware that his heart rate had picked up anyway, and he did slant his eyes sideway to look at Derek. They hadn’t spoken directly to each other since Stiles had fled Derek’s kitchen the day before, and Stiles had been admittedly avoiding him a little bit. He didn’t seem to be suffering any lasting effects, though Isaac had confided to Scott, who’d promptly told Stiles that Derek had been dizzy and weak for several hours after the incident. All the same, sick guilt twisted in Stiles’ stomach every time he looked at Derek, and he’d been pretty sure that Derek was avoiding him too.

Not any more, apparently, because Derek had now casually positioned himself on the other end of the couch Stiles had claimed. He was sitting far enough away that their shoulders couldn’t accidentally touch, but Stiles couldn’t be sure if that was a reaction to him specifically, or Derek just generally being anti-casual touch. He was however not looking at Stiles, his gaze fixed vaguely in Scott and Isaac’s direction in a way that was just a little too forced and Stiles could just tell that Derek was fighting the urge to look at him.

“So,” Stiles caved in and spoke. Stiles tended to have sort of iffy relationship with silence on the whole, but the silence between them wasn’t just silence it was like a physical thing sitting on the couch, pressing against them and it sort of hurt. “This is what you guys do at your super secret full moon parties? I gotta say, I’m kind of disappointed.”

Derek head tilted toward him, slow and almost unwilling. “They aren’t allowed to party inside any more,” he deadpanned, “They kept breaking the furniture.” Stiles blinked, because he couldn’t quite tell if that was the truth or a joke, but then Derek’s lips twitched just the tiniest of fractions; it may have been both. With that a portion of the tension between them fractured and faded away. Now Stiles was focusing on Derek’s lips though, and that was dangerous territory. Really dangerous, like he so should not be looking, and he definitely shouldn’t be thinking about how soft they looked, or remembering how the rub of Derek’s stubble felt against his cheeks... yeah, he really needed to stop.

He forced himself to look away, fidgeting uncomfortably. Derek was still watching him with that gaze that was almost a physical thing burning into him; he had a feeling Derek was remembering the same thing and that knowledge simultaneously made his stomach flip nauseously and brought a flush to his cheeks.

 

“So yesterday,” he started, already regretting it but it was too late to stop. He so didn’t want to have this conversation at all, let alone in a room full of werewolves, only half of whom were even pretending to not be listening.

Derek had gone very still, barely even blinking, his gaze locked somewhere in the vicinity of the tip of Stiles’ nose.

Stiles hesitated for a moment, both trying to decide which part of yesterday would be the least inappropriate to discuss and noticeably distracted by Derek’s existence. “You didn’t push me away,” was what he eventually said, and he immediately did a mental facepalm because that was not safe, of all of the not safe things they could have talked about, that was pretty much the not safest.

Derek stopped, not even blinking anymore and for a second Stiles started to think Derek didn’t get what he was referring to. Stiles thought it was pretty obvious what he was referring too, since it was basically what he’d been trying and failing to not think about all day; and judging from the way even Scott was now openly watching them, even he got it, so really Derek had no excuse. “No,” he eventually conceded, being typically unhelpful.

When no more words were forthcoming Stiles had no choice but to prompt him, “Why?” Why even kiss me in the first place? he wanted to ask, but that was a whole different barrel of issues that he definitely wasn’t ready to open yet.

Derek shrugged a little, more of a twitch in his shoulders than an actual expression. “I didn’t want to.”

That... made no sense at all. “Dude, I was full on sucking the life out of you. Shouldn’t some sort of self preservation instinct have kicked in or something?”

Derek shrugged again evasively. Not that Stiles really had much ground to talk about self preservation instinct, as evidenced by the fact that at least seventy-five percent of his social circle was made up of werewolves, but still. Stiles huffed, supremely unsatisfied by the inadequacy of Derek’s response. “Care to elaborate?’ he pushed.

Derek glowered at him for a minute, then dropped his gaze and looked away.

“Alright, fine. Whatever. I guess we’re done talking,” Stiles grumbled, pushing himself up off the couch. He only saw the movement out of the corner of his eye, barely there to begin with and gone before he could really see it; but he could have sworn Derek reached for him before stopping himself and aborting the gesture.

“Where are you going?” Derek asked instead, because as the alpha he was under the impression he had the right to be an overbearing control freak whenever he felt like it.

Since Stiles wasn’t Derek, he actually deigned to answer, “Upstairs to get a drink. Since nothing exciting is going to happen down here.” He could feel Derek’s scrunched up expression of displeasure burning into his back, but he didn’t bother looking around to confirm it.

The other wolves had shifted some in the past few hours. Erica had stolen Boyd’s book and distracted him by making out for a while, but that had been quickly discouraged by the other wolves so with a huff she settled fully in his lap and starting reading the book herself. Scott and Isaac had been armwrestling off and on, and Jackson was still sulking. He’d refused Scott’s peace offering of letting him join in the arm wrestling, choosing instead to lay moodily in the middle of the floor and stare at the ceiling in between restless sets of sit-ups. They were all drowsy now though, Boyd’s hand no longer moving through Erica’s hair and the book slumped against her chest, Scott and Isaac were still jostling each other a little, but it was lethargic, and Jackson had half rolled over onto his stomach, pillowing his face on his hands with his eyes closed.

True to his word, Stiles moved across the room toward the door, focused more on just getting away from the pack’s constant presence for at least a few minutes than actually quenching his thirst. Naturally, Jackson had chosen to sprawl directly in Stiles’ way, and too impatient Stiles made the unfortunate decision to step over him, rather than circle all the way around Scott and Issac’s chair. Jackson, seemingly asleep, didn’t appear to notice; until Stiles’ foot caught on the tail of his shirt.

A low growl was the only warning Stiles had. He’d barely made it a few steps past Jackson before he felt the rush of air behind him and dropped to the floor on reflex just in time to mostly avoid Jackson’s lunge. Jackson landed still mid-shift and whipped back around to lunge again. The rest of the pack were instantly roused, but none of them were close enough to do anything. 

It all happened too fast for Stiles to process properly. One second Jackson was crouched and snarling at him. The next Jackson was midleap. Then Stiles was lifting his hand in a weak warding off gesture. “Stop!” he ordered, which was weird because that should have been a squeak of terror or at the very least a shaky plead.

Even weirder, Jackson listened. He skidded to a halt inches from Stiles, all glowing eyes and dripping fangs, but panting like an overgrown puppy. No one moved for an impossibly long second, Jackson staring up at him from his crouched position, eyes still glowing that eerie blue while Stiles stared back, holding his breath. He wasn’t attacking, but he hadn’t shifted back either, and there was very little of Jackson’s human self in that luminous gaze. The air seemed to shift and stir around them, though there was nothing in the room that could have created a breeze and it made Stiles’ skin prickle in a way that while unfamiliar, inexplicably made something warm settle in the pit of his stomach.

Eventually, when Jackson made no move to try and eat him again, Stiles dared to slowly turn to look at the others, hoping for some explanation. The rest of them were all staring back at him, every single one of their eyes glowing the same as Jackson’s. Isaac moved first; from his position crouched beside Scott’s chair he crept slowly forward, fangs visible between his lips but not bared. Rather, there was something uncomfortably submissive about his posture, reminding Stiles of Isaac’s first full moon when Derek had exerted his dominance to cow the new wolf.

Erica came next, all lupine grace as she stepped down from the couch and prowled toward him. Then Boyd, swaying slightly with his head tilted as though he could hear something Stiles’ couldn’t. Scott too had begun to move, though he managed to remain upright, stumbling along at Isaac’s heels. 

Stiles had known his fair share of terror in the past year, it was in fact starting to become pretty par for the course for him. But the sight of five werewolves prowling toward him, eyes glowing and locked unblinkingly on his tender vulnerable self was probably not something he was ever going to be entirely comfortable with. His pulse was pounding in his throat and he stumbled back a step, only for his back to hit up against the wall. They were circling closer, making low rumbling sounds and Stiles was very much trapped. A part of him was disappointed; he’d really thought they were all passed the trying-to-eat-Stiles-stage.

In desperation he turned to Derek, hoping the alpha could control his whole pack at once. Except, Derek’s eyes were glowing too, a vibrant, alarming red, though he’d managed to otherwise retain his human features. He was stalking closer, his steps slow and surprisingly ungraceful, as though he was fighting it but unable to stop himself.

Stiles nearly jumped out of his skin when a nose bumped against his hip. He looked down and almost fainted because, holy mother of god, Isaac was nuzzling him, rubbing his cheek against Stiles’ thigh like some gigantic, fang-y puppy. This was now officially on the top of the Weirdest Night Of My Life list.

“W-Woah, okay guys,” he tried shakily, making a futile attempt to slide along the wall in hopes of breaking free of the wolf circle that was drawing steadily closer to him, “Personal space. Really this... this is not okay.” Oh god, now Erica was butting her head against his other leg and even Scott was hovering uncomfortably close and Stiles was frantically trying to remember if he’d ever read anything about wolves wanting to snuggle with their prey before they ate.

Derek had reached them, and the betas fell back reluctantly to make way for him. He sidled around to Stiles’ side, looming at full capacity. Stiles shrank back against the wall, heart in his throat, and would have fallen over sideways in an attempt to lean away from Derek had Scott not been standing uncomfortably close on the other side of him. Derek’s face pressed in so close Stiles could feel the heat of his breath and hear his sniff as his nostrils flared and there was absolutely no way Stiles was okay with those teeth that close to his throat. Except there was no biting, ripping, tearing, or otherwise damaging. Instead Derek made a grunting noise that sounded suspiciously like a cross between satisfaction and contentment, and then he butted his head against Stiles’ shoulder.

Now it was officially the weirdest night ever.

Despite the fangs, they actually weren’t being menacing. In fact, this was the most non-menacing werewolf encounter Stiles had ever had. That inexplicable warm, fuzzy feeling was still filling his chest, pushing away the instinctive terror that came from being surrounded by werewolves. There was a sort of electrical charge to the air, crackling along Stiles’ skin and making the hair on his arms stand on end. With it came a smell, a smell that was at once alien, wild and familiar; like pine and fur, fresh snow and old blood, and it’s sparked something in the back of his mind, some memory that’s flitting just at the edges of his reach. His fear was gone, floating away like the fragments of a dream, because there was nothing to be afraid of. These were his friends, his pack, his home.


	7. Chapter 7

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Chapter 7  
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Stiles’ first thought upon waking was that he had been hit by a truck. His second thought was that he was still pinned under a truck, or five. As the rest of his senses came back online however, the sound of a rumbly, growly snore filtered in and he concluded that those trucks were probably in fact werewolves. A few minutes later when he managed to pry his eyes open his suspicion was confirmed; yes, he had somehow ended up on the bottom of a werewolf puppy pile.

His memories of the night before, after the part where they’d started the nuzzle-fest, were a little hazy, in a similar way to how his memories of the few times he’d gotten well and truly drunk were sort of hazy. There had been a lot of touching though, he definitely remembered touch and his heart rate tripled before slowing back down in relief when he noted that they were all still fully clothed.

He swallowed and closed his eyes again, taking a few deep breaths in an attempt to fend back the wave of dizziness that came over him. He hadn’t been eaten, maimed, or mauled, and everyone’s virtue appeared to be intact, or at least as intact as it had been before last night. All in all, it wasn’t the worst full moon he’d lived through.

The others all appeared to be sleeping still, several of them snoring. After a few minutes Stiles opened his eyes again hesitantly, trying not to be alarmed by the fact that the first thing he saw was a face full of Jackson; Jackson, who appeared to be using Stiles’ chest as a pillow. Everytime Stiles thought his life couldn’t get weirder, he was proved wrong. It was almost sweet though, in a strange way, how Jackson seemed to transform from arrogant asshole to surprisingly soft and innocent in his sleep.

Over Jackson’s shoulder Stiles could just see Erica’s hair from where her head appeared to be nestled against Jackson’s shoulder blades, and Boyd’s dark arm was slung over both of them. Isaac was laying on Stiles’ legs, one arm curled around Stiles’ knees to reach over and bump against Erica’s head. The familiar sound of Scott’s snoring came from behind Isaac, and Stiles recognized the legs that were draped across Isaac’s lower body too.

The snoring right in Stiles ear was getting louder, and it was then that it occurred to him that he wasn’t laying flat on his back but rather was propped up at an angle. His head wasn’t resting on the plush rug beneath them either, but on something that was simultaneously solid and comfortable and radiating warmth against his cheek. And moving. A steady, rhythmic rise and fall that matched the snores in his ear and the subtle shifting of the arm that was laying heavily across his shoulders, and oh god it was Derek. He was snuggling with Derek. He was practically being spooned, by Derek.

He wanted to be alarmed. He was alarmed really, but not nearly as alarmed as he should be. More like... baffled. He also should have been way more uncomfortable than he was. Except, he was pretty much the exact opposite of uncomfortable. Admittedly, the rug wasn’t particularly soft, and the cement floor underneath it certainly wasn’t, and he was pretty sure his back was going to be making him pay for this for a while. Also werewolves are heavy, very heavy, and Stiles was sort of afraid to move for fear of their weight breaking something, notably him. But he also had absolutely no desire to move. Despite the chill that hung in the air, he felt warm and cozy under their combined body heat. And rather than feel constricted pinned down underneath them, it actually felt sort of secure, like being burritoed in his favorite blanket.

All in all, what he felt was relaxed. It took him a little while to identify the feeling; it had been so long since he’d truly felt it that he had begun to forget what it was like. But the simple truth was, this was nice. A bubble of warmth and security was floating around in his chest, and his mind was unusually quiet except for a low, contented hum that matched Derek’s snores.

The others were starting to stir. Erica grumbled incoherently and buried her face in Stiles hip bone while Boyd’s arm flexed around her in what was probably just a portion of a full bodied stretch and Scott’s legs were shifting on top of Isaac’s, causing Isaac to kick back sleepily. It might have been adorable, had Stiles not been on the bottom of the pile and therefore the most vulnerable if anyone woke up displeased with the sleeping situation.

He squirmed a little, with the half formed notion of wiggling his way free before anyone noticed. But the movement was cut short when Derek’s arm across his chest twitched and tightened. “Stop moving,” Derek growled, low and a little slurred in his ear, making him jump because he’d been pretty sure that Derek was still asleep. He stilled instantly and moments later Derek’s nose was pressing against the soft skin just behind his ear and Derek was snoring again.

It was almost torturous, waiting what felt like an eternity for the wolves to gradually wake up. None of them seemed to be in any hurry at all to move. Even Jackson, when he finally opened his eyes, just made a disgruntled snorting sound and rolled over so that his back was to Stiles’ face, which of course caused a repercussive series of complaints from Erica and Boyd.

Eventually Scott appeared from somewhere behind Isaac’s curls, his own hair sticking up at odd angles and his face wrinkled in an expression of bemusement. “Dude?” he questioned, semi-coherently as he blinked in Stiles’ general direction. Stiles had no answer to give him but a helpless shrug, and after a minute during which Stiles could actually see Scott trying to process, he rolled off of both Stiles and Isaac into a half sitting sprawl so that he could continue to stare at the rest of the pack in confusion. Jackson was the next to admit defeat and sit up, propping himself up against one of the chairs and pulling out his phone.

By the time Stiles was finally free to sit up himself, the rest of the pack had at least advanced from the zombie stage to the vaguely disoriented stage. Naturally, Derek was the first to make it all the way to his feet, stretching his arms above his head and leaning back in a way that made an audible crack all the way up and down his spine.

“So, that was... different,” Scott offered at length, leaning back on his hands with Isaac now half draped across his legs.

“I told you guys an orgy was a good idea,” Erica did her best to smirk around a yawn.

“Woah, orgy? There was no orgy here,” Stiles protested, voice wavering dangerously close to a squeak. Erica grinned at him in a way that showed way more teeth than necessary and it occurred to him that she had been joking, probably.

“I’ll take this over cleaning up blood and broken furniture any day,” Boyd pointed out, which, when he put it that way was a good point.

Jackson levered himself to his feet, putting his phone away. “Lydia’s here,” he announced by way of goodbye. Except, he didn’t leave. He just sort of stood there, looking faintly lost. “We’re going to breakfast,” he added, but still didn’t move. 

There was a round of exchanged glances and a little fidgeting before Isaac finally declared, “I’m starving.” Everyone looked relieved.

________________________________________

That was how Stiles’ ended up crammed in the center of a circular booth at Denny’s, with Scott’s knee bangning against his on one side and Derek pressed against his shoulder on the other. It was surprisingly... not uncomfortable. Isaac sat on Scott’s other side with Erica and Boyd, while Jackson and Lydia cuddled next to Derek. In general, there was entirely too much PDA at the table, and playfulness, and happiness; Stiles didn’t know what to do with it.

Somewhere in between Jackson, Boyd and Scott engaging in a lively debate about an upcoming football game, and Isaac and Erica starting a straw wrapper fight, Lydia raised a very confused eyebrow at Stiles. “What did you do to them?” she asked, half accusatory and half bewildered.

“Why do you assume I did something?” he countered innocently.

“They’re never this happy after a full moon. You’re the variable that changed.” She squirmed a little in surprised as Jackson pulled her closer against him and stuck his nose behind her ear.

Stiles was no less surprised when suddenly there was a heavy arm around his shoulders and the line of heat that came from being pressed up against a warm body from shoulder to knee. “Magic,” Derek said, though it took a minute for Stiles to connect the fact that the word had in fact come from Derek’s mouth; it was so casual, so lacking in growl or menace.

He craned his head around to look at Derek and, woah, hello there, no personal space whatsoever.

“Whatever it was, we should do it again,” Boyd suggested.

“That was the best sleep I’ve had in... ever,” Erica agreed, stretching lazily.

Lydia was still looking at Stiles expectantly and he fidgeted. “It started when Jackson tried to kill me,” he started.

Jackson huffed, “You mean when you stepped on me.”

Lydia gave him a gentle smack on the shoulder, “Remember that conversation we had about reasonable response?” Jackson had the decency to look at least mildly abashed and Stiles was once again reminded that Lydia was magical.

“And then everyone wolfed out and started trying to snuggle me to death,” Stiles finished what was probably the most inadequate explanation ever. 

Lydia looked skeptical, “Just out of the blue, without any reason they went from murderous to cuddly?”

“Like I said,” Derek interjected, with just a hint of impatience, “Magic.”

“Care to explain that one a little more, buddy?” Stiles prompted, trying half heartedly to put at least some distance between them, since the alternative was giving in and laying his head on Derek’s shoulder; he was pretty sure none of them were ready for that.

Derek rolled his eyes like it should have been obvious and their lack of ability to just intuitively understand what he was talking about was a great burden on him. “Stiles tapped into the pack bond and somehow... amplified it.”

“Wait, so we could feel like this all the time?” Erica asked.

Derek’s shoulders tightened just a little bit, subtle enough that only Stiles noticed because he was still half leaning against them. “Not exactly,” Derek hedged, “But a healthy pack is usually less-”

“Angry?” Scott provided and they all winced. It wasn’t like they weren’t all aware of the fact that their pack was screwed up, but it was usually a topic of conversation that they actively avoided talking about.

Derek looked down, picking at a crack in the formica on the table with the hand that wasn’t still cupped around Stiles shoulder. Stiles bit his lip, a sudden ache of sympathy swelling in his chest. He may not agree with all, or most, of Derek’s leadership decisions, but he knew Derek was genuinely trying. It wasn’t like Derek had gotten to go to alpha school or something to learn how to do this stuff before getting all this responsibility thrown at him; and he wasn’t that much older than them either.

“Okay, so, I brought a little zen to the party last night,” Stiles put in, hoping derail the angst, “What I want to know is how? I mean, I didn’t do it on purpose, it just sort of happened. And how have you guys been touching me all night, when last time I tried to touch Derek I almost killed him?”

“You two did more than touch though,” Scott pointed out, and Stiles was a little bit mortified by the, totally unfair, innuendo.

“Scott’s right, maybe it was the kissing,” Isaac agreed, glancing toward Derek for confirmation, “Like a succubus or something?” Well, someone had been paying attention to their creature of the night lessons.

Derek shook his head. “Succubi are born, you can’t become one.”

“All the same, keep your lips to yourself, zombie-boy,” Jackson grumbled.

“Succubi are girls anyway,” Lydia added absently, “Stiles would be an incubus.”

“Well, that makes me feel so much better,” Stiles muttered dryly. “So what, as long as I never kiss anyone again I’m good?” He slumped against the table, suddenly seeing a long, virginal life stretched before him.

“I don’t think it’s that simple,” Derek answered, in a tone that was not entirely comforting.

“Alright then, grace us with your theories,” Stiles prompted. Derek glowered, but Stiles decided to just take it as a sign of endearment and move on.

“You were hurt,” Derek said simply, “But afterward you healed. The point wasn’t taking my life, it was my healing ability.”

Scott perked up. “That could explain the dog too,” he suggested, “If you took more than you needed, and had some energy or whatever left over, maybe you were trying to heal the dog too.”

“But the dog wasn’t hurt,” Isaac protested, “It was dead. There’s a big difference between healing and bringing something back from the dead. We can’t do that.”

“Lydia brought Peter back,” Erica commented, absently twirling a fork between her fingers, “Maybe you’re immune like her?”

“I didn’t bring Peter back,” Lydia denied, fidgeting uncomfortably, “He used me to bring himself back.” Jackson’s arm tightened around her and she leaned her head against his shoulder gratefully.

“Besides, I didn’t bring the dog back to life anyway,” Stiles said.

“Um, dude, I was there. It looked pretty lively,” Scott argued, eyebrows drawn together in that slightly pained look he got sometimes.

He shook his head. “I, I don’t know, animated it or something, I didn’t bring it back to life; there’s a difference.” They were all looking at him with expressions that ranged from confused to wary to creeped out. He huffed in exasperation, “It’s heart didn’t beat, okay? It moved around some, but it wasn’t alive.”

Scott frowned at the table for a long minute, thinking back. “You’re right,” he confirmed, “I didn’t really think about it at the time.”

An uncomfortable silence fell over them before Isaac voiced the question that was on all of their minds, “So what does it mean?”

No one had come up with an answer by the time they’d all finished eating and paid the bill. Party effectively ruined, they one by one came up with excuses about homework that needed done or errands or chores. It was almost a relief; the inexplicable feelings of warmth and contentment that they had all woken up with were still present, but they had faded, and the conversation had left them all anxious, Stiles most of all. He was more than ready to go home and collapse into bed, maybe lose himself in a little research.

But as he made his way to the parking lot, Derek abruptly grabbed his arm and manhandled him around the side of the building.

“I get that you’re the alpha and all, but seriously, you can’t just drag people around at will,” Stiles complained, but it was admittedly half hearted and Derek was pressing dangerously close into his personal space, which was frankly distracting. His back hit the rough stucco of the wall and Derek was doing the looming thing again. “What-What are you doing?” he hedged, watching Derek warily.

“Testing my theory,” Derek answered. Stiles saw it coming, knew exactly what Derek was planning seconds before it happened, but he couldn’t stop it; a part of him didn’t want to, which was bad, very bad, that part needed to shut up, immediately.

The kiss was gentle, tentative, nothing like the hunger and burning heat of last time. At first Derek’s lips were barely even touching him, as though Derek was being, understandably cautious. But when nothing seemed to happen, instead of pulling away Derek pushed closer, until their chests bumped together.

Stiles was freaking out. He was definitely very, very freaked out. He forced his eyes to stay open, watching in terror for any sign of life-sucking, but if anything Derek’s face gained more color. His eyes were open too and Stiles’ heart seized in his chest at the barely veiled heat in them. He groaned, mouth falling open just a little as one of Derek’s large hands settled on his hip, and Derek’s thigh began to press between his legs. The stucco wall was cool and rough against his back, but Derek was solid and warm and Stiles suddenly felt so light headed there was no way he’d still be on his feet if Derek wasn’t there to prevent him from falling over.

It felt good, so good that Stiles was tempted to just give in and fall into it. Derek was sucking on his lower lip, drawing a soft, needy sound from his throat. He lifted his hands and braced them against Derek’s chest, thinking to pull him closer; but once they were there he found himself pushing. Of course, no amount of force he could provide would move Derek if he didn’t want to be moved, but after a moment Stiles’ efforts seemed to process and Derek relented, pulling back with a low sound of complaint.

They were both breathing heavily, and Derek hadn’t gone far, still looming close enough for Stiles to hear the subtle tremors in his breath. He’d turned his face away, averting his eyes and making it difficult to read it expression. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “I shouldn’t have-”

“Hey, at least now we know,” Stiles brushed it off, his words coming out shaky and weak. He was relieved, really, to not have accidentally started feeding on Derek’s energy or life or whatever again, but he was also confused, and aroused, kind of really aroused, which made him all the more confused, and there was no way in hell Derek hadn’t noticed.

Derek nodded stiffly, dropping his hand and stepping back. There was something weirdly vulnerable to the set of his shoulders, and Stiles really had no idea what to do with this.

“We should probably, um, take some time apart though,” he said, wincing even as the words came out and Derek stiffened further. “I need to... to figure out what’s going on with me. And we should probably find that witch, you know the one that killed me. Since we have no idea what he was planning, or if he’ll try something again, or anything really. He might be dangerous.” Stiles was rambling nervously, because Derek wasn’t touching him anymore but he was still uncomfortably close, and worse Stiles was already starting to miss it.

Derek nodded curtly, taking several more steps back that were slow and stiff, like it took effort. “Be careful,” he warned, “Call me if-”

“Yeah, I will.”

And with that Derek turned sharply on his heel and vanished around the side of the building. Stiles groaned, slumping back against the wall and took a minute to try and get his blood circulating properly again. When Stiles finally made it to the Jeep where Scott was waiting, Scott’s nostrils flared in greeting and he wrinkled his nose, but didn’t ask. Stiles figured that was probably for the best.

________________________________________

Despite Stiles’ protests, Scott refused to leave. Not that Stiles really argued too hard; Scott was his best friend, and a master of the puppy eyes. All in all, it was sort of nice to waste an afternoon playing video games and just chilling out like they used to.

But, as the afternoon sun began to dip toward the west, Scott fell asleep, sprawled carelessly across Stiles bed, and Stiles began to get restless. He didn’t blame Scott for falling asleep, all of the wolves had maintained a relaxed, dopey sort of mood all through breakfast, despite the seriousness of the conversation. Stiles was seriously starting to wonder if they’d somehow been slipped some sort of werewolf version of catnip or something, because there was no way this was normal. The compulsive touching hadn’t stopped either, even hours later when Scott fell asleep his hand draped over the side of the bed to bump against Stiles’ shoulder.

Stiles, however, was not calm, or relaxed. He was restless, jittery, that itchy, skin-crawling feeling back again and suddenly his room felt too small, too claustrophobic. He fought it for a while, trying to distract himself with books, or video games, or listening to the sound of Scott’s snores. It was no use. When he couldn’t stand it anymore he carefully wiggled away from Scott’s touch and tiptoed out of the door, promising himself guiltily that he’d bring back a pizza for dinner.

He ended up in the cemetery. It wasn’t so much a conscious decision as a compulsion, just some instinctual sense that said that was where he needed to go. He didn’t head for his mother’s grave however, he didn’t even pass the gate. He considered it for a moment, standing along the fence and looking in, but in the end he turned away and instead sat down at the old bus stop across the street; though it wasn’t really so much of a bus stop as a weathered old wooden bench placed seemingly at random beside the road with the woods creeping up around it, and as far as Stiles knew no bus had ever stopped there.

An old woman was already sitting on the bench, and Stiles carefully perched himself on the far end so as not to intrude. She glanced sideways at him when he first sat down, but neither of them spoke. Stiles slumped, burying his hands in the pockets of his jacket, and stared balefully across the road at the cemetery. The restlessness was better here, no longer the crushing weight it had been in his room, but he didn’t find the same peace he usually did when he visited his mom. The cemetery had always been a place a solace for him, a quiet place to come and remember his mom, to feel some connection to her. But now the cemetery just looked empty and sad, and it made his heart ache.

He sat there for a while all the same, picking lint out of his pockets and chewing on his lip. He watched a small group of mourners enter the cemetery with flowers, and then a little while later leave without them. He watched an old man, the same one he’d seen several days earlier, stand just inside the fence watching the road expectantly. He listened to the birds in the woods behind him, and the occasional rush of cars passing by. But inevitably, he got bored.

He glanced at the woman beside him, sitting primly with her hands in her lap, staring straight ahead. She looked vaguely familiar, and Stiles was pretty sure that he’d seen her there before, sitting right here on this bench watching the cemetery. He hadn’t even realized he was staring at her until she looked over and caught him.

“Can I help you with something, young man?” she asked.

He looked away quickly, chagrined. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“You don’t usually sit here,” she observed, eyeing him with an uncomfortably keen gaze.

“I-” he paused, frowning, “You know me?”

She smiled, both embarrassed and a little sad, “I’ve been coming here nearly every day for six years; I recognize most of the regular visitors that come and go through that gate.”

He slumped against the back of the bench, gaze drawn back to the cemetery across the road, empty and silent. “Do you ever go in?” he found himself asking.

She shook her head slowly, “Not once.”

“Why not?” he chewed his lip distractedly, “I mean, isn’t that the point of a cemetery? So the people left behind have something to hold on to?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, “That’s awfully discerning of you.”

He shrugged, unable to resist grinning just a little. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”

She didn’t answer for a long time, and Stiles started to think she wasn’t going to. He looked down, picking at a chip in the bench paint. “I suppose not going in is my way of holding onto him,” she said at last, startling him. He looked up at her, confused. “My husband... he was a very lively man,” she explained, rubbing the tarnished wedding band on her finger absently, “That piece of stone in there, it isn’t him. I suppose I want to hold on to his life, not his death.”

Stiles swallowed, a lump rising in his chest. Her words made sense, in a painful way. He knew things about his mom; he knew that she’d had moles a lot like his, and that she’d loved the smell of cinnamon. He knew the exact time and cause of her death, he knew what her last words had been. But now that he was really thinking about it, he didn’t actually remember her. His dad talked sometimes, on the rare occasion he got drunk and talked about her at all, about how happy she’d been, before she got sick, how much she’d loved to laugh; but it was just a story. He knew words and facts, a few images but even those were lifeless. He didn’t remember what her laugh had sounded like, or the look in her eyes when she’d said goodbye. In contrast, he remembered her gravestone perfectly, every word of the inscription, the roughness of the stone and smoothness of the metal plaque. He didn’t even realize he’d started to cry until he lifted a hand automatically to wipe the tears away.

The old woman patted his shoulder sympathetically. “Who did you lose?”

He ended up telling her everything. Well, not really everything, not about the werewolves or anything like that. But he told her about his mom, all the things he couldn’t say to his dad, and how suddenly her grave just felt empty and cold to him. In return, she told him a little about her husband, about how she hadn’t been there to say goodbye to him before he died, about how she still thought she could feel him next to her sometimes.

By the time they parted the sun had set fully and Stiles’ eyes were sore. It didn’t occur to him until he was halfway home, with a pizza in the passenger seat, that he’d never asked the woman’s name.


	8. Chapter 8

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Chapter 8  
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_-It is in the void, darkness surrounding it, suffocating it. This is not shapeless, impenetrable darkness. It’s colder, and darker, and so terribly vaste. It’s drowning. But then, it moves. The empty space around it begins pulsing, ironically, like a living thing; like the flutter of a thousand steel butterfly wings battering it. It hurts, which is shocking because in this terrible absence of all things it had almost forgotten what pain is like. And then there’s light, light that doesn’t so much pierce the darkness as obliterate it. It flinches from it instinctually-_

_-A road stretches out before him, impossibly long, so long it wavers before his eyes. He’s walking, he doesn’t know why, or where. Except it’s not asphalt he’s walking on, it blood, and endless stream of viscous blood. It’s slopping around his ankles and splashing up his jeans. Except he’s not wearing jeans, he’s wearing fur, the thick matted fur of a massive black wolf-_

_-The light grows brighter; strong and vibrant and alive. It screams. It hurts. And yet, it is drawn to the light, like a moth. This light is a boy, a shape it only vaguely recognizes. But there’s power, so much power, coursing through the void, tearing death apart. And in that light it sees opportunity; escape. The others, all the lost, shapeless dead in that place, are beginning to realize too. They’re reaching for the boy. They’ll tear him apart for just a taste of the sweet breath of life-_

_-He hurts, pain in his chest like a hole torn through it. Like the bottom of his stomach has fallen out and been lost somewhere long ago-_

_-It shrieks, soundless but reverberating with rage, with thirst for power. It hungers for life. It is reaching for the boy, though his light hurts and burns it. It is screaming, and the pain is sweet, ripe with the nectar of life. The boy fights, but it sinks into him, encasing itself in the heart of the supernova-_

_-He’s in the woods, and the only light is him. There’s something in the darkness, many somethings with glowing eyes creeping toward him, bellies to the ground-_

_-It breathes. It has lungs and air fills them. It is curled up in the center of an impossible sun, one that draws power to into itself with gravitational force. It is drunk on power, on life. It bathes in it, lets the strength seep into its shriveled form. It siphons power from the sun, hoarding it, absorbing it. It’s almost time-_

_-ease don’t leave, god please Stiles just don’t leave-_

There was something heavy resting on his shoulder, impeding his progress. He made a low sound of frustration, trying to pull away but the thing held on tighter, making an equally insistent noise.

Except it wasn’t just a noise. It was a word, his word, his name. “Stiles!” Scott was shouting at him, dragging on his shoulder. He blinked, shaking his head in confusion, and realized that he was standing in the middle of the road in his pyjamas. The pale light of early morning lit Scott’s worried frown and everything felt surreally sharp and clear. He didn’t know why he was in the middle of the road, but he did have the irrepressible feeling that he was supposed to be somewhere. Somewhere important.

“You with me?” Scott asked tentatively, peering at him.

“We need to go.” Stiles didn’t stop to look at him, just turned sharply and kept walking.

“Woah, hey,” Scott protested, grabbing his shoulder again but he shook the hand off roughly. “What is wrong with you?”

“We have to go,” he insisted, more urgently and adding an emphatic gesture.

Scott glanced uncertainly down the road in the direction Stiles was trying to go, then glanced the other way for good measure. “Where?” he asked.

“To the place. It’s important.” He was starting to get frustrated; why didn’t Scott understand? Not that he understood, not really, he just knew that they had to go there, right now.

Scott stared at him, then down the road, then down the road the other way, then back at him a few times, completely bewildered before he gave in. “Okay, but maybe you want to take the Jeep?” he suggested, “And like, put some clothes on first?” Stiles glanced down at himself; maybe Scott did have a point.

He made it back to his room, dressed, and grabbed his keys in record time, Scott scrambling after him. He couldn’t explain it, not the twisting urgency in his stomach or the anxious flutter of his pulse, but he couldn’t fight it either and he wasn’t trying. All he knew was that there was some place he desperately needed to be.

Scott sat very tense in the passenger seat, watching him warily as though he might suddenly grow a second head or something, but Stiles ignored him, simply staying focused on the mission.

“So... where are we going?” Scott asked eventually, as the asphalt gave way to dirt road.

“Don’t know.”

“Then how are you-”

“I don’t know, okay? I just am!” He hadn’t meant to shout, he really hadn’t.

“Okay, geez,” Scott muttered, slumping back in his seat and pulling out his phone. Stiles had absolutely no doubt that he was texting Derek and he lashed out, snatching the phone from Scott’s hand; a move which shouldn’t have worked.

“Hey!” Scott protested.

“Not yet,” Stiles snarled, and there was an edge to his voice, an edge that wasn’t him, too deep and dark and angry, and that freaked him out enough that he handed Scott his phone back sheepishly. “Just... wait until we actually know something,” he instructed, making an effort to lower his voice. Scott frowned, not reassured, but he reluctantly put his phone away.

Eventually they ran out of road, and Stiles abandoned the Jeep to start shoving his way through the woods. Scott stumbled after him, and Stiles could feel Scott’s anxiety growing by the step but at least he’d stopped complaining.

Finally, they arrived and Stiles stopped short so abruptly that Scott almost ran into him. Scott blinked over his shoulder in bafflement. “Okay... I see trees?” he offered, raising an eyebrow at Stiles.

He wasn’t wrong, there were trees. In truth, it was a nondescript patch of trees, in the middle of the woods, but Stiles knew it was the right place. There was nothing to mark it as such, the bear trap had been removed, and time and the wind had rearranged the leaves to hide any sign of the major event in their lives that had occurred there. But all the same, Stiles could feel it, like the impression of his head in his favorite pillow only less pleasant; he had died here.

He stood in the center of the clearing and turned a slow circle, closing his head and tilting his face up to the sky. It was an instinct, one that he didn’t understand, but somehow things began to become clearer. Though there were no physical signs left, he knew exactly where his body had lain, could feel the impression it had left behind. He could also feel where Derek had fallen when he pushed him out of the way, where the spell had passed through the air, and where the witch had used magic to cover his tracks. It was all painted before him, like a map of the past in vivid colors and he was drawn inevitably to the deep cluster of shadows that gathered around the place of his death.

Stiles paid no attention to what Scott was doing. He had become lost in the shadows of the past, intangible things that it hadn’t yet occurred to him he shouldn’t be able to see. He circled slowly around the scar where his dead body had lain, watching the bending and rippling of the light as it was sucked into the spot only to vanish, blotted out. He reached toward it compulsively, the bone aching chill reaching back for him, hungry and eager to suck him back into the depths of death.

“Stiles, look at this!” Scott exclaimed, his voice ringing excited and far too loud. Stiles snapped back to himself so sharply it hurt, blinking eyes that were suddenly too sensitive to the light and trying to shaking off the disorientation. Scott was tugging at his shoulder and waving something in his face and he had to grab Scott’s arm to hold it still long enough for him to see what the thing was.

It was a receipt, weather worn and faded, but he could just make out the words “Shasta College Bookstore” at the top. “Where did you get this?” he asked, taking it from Scott and examining it more closely. Besides the name of the bookstore at the top, there was a small symbol doodled in pencil on the back, but it yielded no other information of interest.

“In some bushes over there,” Scott answered, practically bouncing with puppish enthusiasm. “The witch must have dropped it right? I mean how else could it have ended up all the way out here?”

Stiles wasn’t as certain as Scott, but he had to admit it was possible. “Is there still a smell on it?” he asked. 

Scott sniffed it and nodded, “It’s faint, and I never caught the witch’s smell, so I can’t match it.”

“Derek probably can,” Stiles countered, his excitement starting to grow just a little.

“Is this why you needed to come here?” Scott asked, frowning a little. There was concern in his eyes again, and Stiles’ stomach twisted uncomfortably as he remembered the desperate, out of control feeling that had led him here.

He started to shake his head slowly, glancing back toward the gathering of shadows; but they were gone, or at least, not visible to him any more. “Come on,” he said instead, hoping to distract Scott, “Let’s take this to Derek.”

________________________________________

Derek sniffed at the receipt, his raised eyebrow saying he was not at all impressed. To be fair, they had apparently woken him up ridiculously early on a Sunday morning, so perhaps a little extra grumpiness was warranted.

Stiles, however, was having a little difficulty feeling proper contrition, partially because he too was awake ridiculously early in the morning. But mainly, because Derek hadn’t bothered to dress before coming out to the porch to meet them, which meant that Stiles was getting a distractingly nice view of abs, sharp hipbones, very thin pyjama pants, and bare feet; not to mention the sleep ruffled hair and red pillow crease impressed on one of Derek’s cheekbones. It was a good look. It was such a good look that Stiles had absolutely no idea what Derek and Scott were saying and that was probably a bad thing.

Definitely a bad thing. Scott and Derek were both staring at him expectantly and he had to close his eyes to tear them away from the shadows formed by Derek’s hipbones. When he opened them again Scott was looking from him to Derek and back again with an expression of voluntary confusion, and Derek was shuffling his feet a little in what Stiles could have sworn was embarrassment.

“So, witch hunting, right?” Stiles blurted, hoping to distract himself as much as them.

Derek’s lips pursed a little as he looked back at the receipt he still held. “It’s the only lead we’ve got.”

Ten minutes later, Derek was fully dressed and ordering them to pile into his Camaro. After ten more minutes of arguing about it, Scott was sulking in the backseat and Derek was humming along to the pur of the Camaro’s engine; it was a quiet noise, and Stiles was pretty sure Derek wasn’t even aware that he was doing it, which made it that much harder not to snigger at him for it.

They sat mostly in silence, Scott still not thrilled about the seating arrangement and Derek being his usual uncommunicative self. For his part, Stiles stared distractedly out of the window, the receipt clenched in his fist.

“So how are we actually supposed to find this guy?” Scott asked at length, breaking the silence, “All we have is a receipt to go off of.”

“We have his scent,” Derek countered.

“On a campus with ten thousand other people. I don’t know about yours, but my nose definitely isn’t that good,” Scott huffed. Derek made a noncommittally disgruntled sound that was probably a confirmation that Scott was right, without Derek having to actually admit that Scott was right.

“Well, he probably lives in a dorm,” Stiles offered.

Derek glanced sideways at him, “How do you know that?”

Stiles slouched in his seat, fidgeting with the seatbelt. “I don’t know, I just do.” Derek continued to stare at him, rather than look at the road which was very unnerving. Unlike Scott, ‘just go with it’ apparently still didn’t fly with Derek. He sighed, staring pointedly out of the windshield, both hoping to direct Derek’s eyes back that way and avoiding looking at him directly. “I saw it,” he admitted, “I didn’t think too closely about it before, but now that I am, I saw him sitting around in a room that looked a lot like a dorm room, trying to practice magic.

“Wait, you didn’t tell me that,” Scott protested, sounding offended.

“Like I said, I didn’t really think about-”

“What do you mean, ‘saw’?” Derek interrupted.

“I don’t know, like a vision or something? But not a vision, more like... like memories. Like I was seeing some of his memories,” he squirmed uncomfortably. He didn’t really want to think about it any more than he had too.

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Derek snapped, “Can you remember anything else that might have been important?”

“Like what, his social security number?” Stiles retorted; it wasn’t an entirely reasonable reaction, especially since he’d come to expect Derek to be short tempered, but it still hurt. “I was sort of distracted by the whole dying thing at the time,” he added, knowing it was a sort of mean thing to say but feeling justified in it.

Derek flinched, hands tightening on the wheel.

“Look, they weren’t exactly filled with personal details, okay? They were more like... just feelings. He was angry, about being bullied, about never getting noticed,” it was hard to explain, but he was trying. “I don’t think he’s a very powerful witch. And I think... I think that may have been what he was after; power.”

“It seemed like he had power to me,” Derek shook his head, “He had enough power to ambush us.”

“Yeah, but that was on his terms. His plan, I mean, a really shitty plan that we should probably be really embarrassed worked, sort of, but still. And he had his spells prepackaged, they didn’t just come from him.”

“So he had help,” Derek surmised, glancing sideways at Stiles significantly.

“Allison had no idea what I was talking about, man,” Stiles denied immediately, knowing that look.

“Wait, you talked to Allison?” Scott interjected, a hint of a whine in his voice in protest at being left out of the loop, “Is she-, I mean-”

“Pining over you like a lovesick puppy?” Stiles finished his sentence for him, rolling his eyes, “Yeah, you guys are still made for each other. Can we please get back to the problem at hand?”

“Right, sorry,” Scott ducked his head, but he was grinning just a little. After a few moments Scott leaned forward again, leaning on the backs of their seats, “How was killing you supposed to give him power, anyway?”

“The spell wasn’t supposed to kill me,” Stiles corrected, “And more importantly, he wasn’t aiming for me.” He watched Scott’s forehead wrinkle in the rearview mirror as Scott frowned at him, then glanced toward Derek, whose grip was now so tight on the steering wheel that it was groaning dangerously. It occurred to him that Derek may have left out that minor detail in the recap.

“If it wasn’t supposed to kill, what was it supposed to do?” Derek asked, voice coming out harsh through grit teeth.

“I don’t know,” he hedged, because he didn’t. But now he was thinking about it, and the memories were becoming sharper, clearer, and the pieces were falling together. “I don’t know,” he said again, to make it absolutely clear, “But I think, maybe, I have a theory.” His brain was still working, still going over the disjointed flashes he’d seen, the emotions that had gone with him.

When he didn’t say anything else for several minutes Scott nudged him pointedly. “Care to share?”

“He wanted power,” Stiles chewed his lip, “The memories I saw... in all of them he felt weak, useless; he was being bullied, he was lonely and angry.”

“So... he decides to catch a werewolf?” Derek guessed, but there was a hint of skepticism in his tone.

“I’m not saying the guy’s not an idiot. But yeah, and not just any werewolf, I’d say he was probably looking for you specifically, because of the whole alpha thing. He did set up his trap in the woods by your house.”

“And I repeat, how was that supposed to get him power?” Scott pressed, “What did he expect to do, make Derek his bitch?” Scott stopped half way through the last word, his face scrunching up as though he was now entertaining several images that were making him want to scrub his brain with bleach.

Derek attempted to reach around the seats, probably to hit Scott, but the car started to veer and he had no choice but to focus back on the road.

“Poor choice of words,” Stiles complained, “But yeah, basically. I could feel it at first, when the spell it hit me, I got the memories and the feelings, and I couldn’t help but sort of... feel bad for him.” He shrugged, just thinking about it making him uncomfortable, “But not just in like an empathic way, but like I was taking on his feelings, like they were becoming a part of me. And I wanted to... to avenge him.”

They were all silent, processing it, before Scott tentatively voiced what they were all thinking, “Like a kanima?” Stiles nodded, throat going dry as for a moment he considered what might have happened if the witch had succeeded and managed to turn Derek into his own personal kanima.

“But it didn’t work,” Derek deflected, drawing him back to the present, “You’re not a kanima, and you don’t have any lingering connection to him, do you?”

“No,” he assured, “Definitely not.”

“If you did it’d probably be a lot easier to find him,” Scott muttered, “But how come you, you know, died? If that wasn’t what the spell was supposed to do.”

Stiles shrugged, “I’m- was human.” He swallowed, and could have sworn that both Derek and Scott flinched a little at his use of the past tense. “The spell was meant for a werewolf, my body couldn’t handle it, I guess.”

Scott sat back in his seat, staring vacantly out of the window, while Derek busied himself by focusing on the road. Clearly it was a topic none of them enjoyed thinking about, which Stiles found weirdly gratifying, and that was probably bad of him.

“Do you remember anything else?” said Derek after a while, voice much softer than the last time he’d asked.

“I remember pain,” he mumbled, not really meaning to. His chest ached at the memory, the too familiar cold creeping over him again, the feeling of icicles stabbing his lungs with each breath, “And I remember what it was like to be dead.”

He could feel Scott go still in the backseat, and heard the sharp intake of Derek’s breath as though he’d been hit. Neither of them spoke and he knew they were waiting for him to elaborate, holding their breath with morbid curiosity. But he didn’t know what else to say; there weren’t words to describe the place he’d been, and any he used to try would be hollow and meaningless in the face of the reality.

“Was it bad?” Scott finally prompted, voice quiet like he half hoped Stiles wouldn’t hear so that he couldn’t answer.

“Yes,” he answered automatically, but stopped, “And no. It was quiet, and dark, like so dark that ‘dark’ doesn’t even cover it. I mean, there was nothing there. I couldn’t see, or hear, or move, or anything. It felt, I don’t know, peaceful, at least at first, like I didn’t have to be scared or hurt anymore.” He was staring straight ahead, at the road stretched out in front of them, but he wasn’t really seeing it, and his voice was coming out rough and raw from his throat. “But I wasn’t alone,” he shuddered, remembering the cold, leaching fingers that had grasped for him, trying to suck him further down, “There were these things, and they-” he shuddered again, wrapping his arms around himself and blinking to force himself back into the present.

“But you’re back now,” Scott put a hand on his shoulder, an earnest attempt at comfort and Stiles was grateful for it, even if it did little to drive away the cold, “So it’s okay, right?”

He nodded, for Scott’s sake, but it was a lie. They were all pretty aware that things were not okay.

________________________________________

“Okay, so, where do we start?” Scott asked, staring around hopelessly. They stood outside of the Shasta College campus bookstore, watching the college students going about their daily lives. It was a Sunday, so things were mostly quiet, but out of the ten thousand plus students enrolled there finding just one seemed impossible.

“The dorms,” Derek reminded, his shoulders braced and legs spread in the posture that Stiles had come to recognize as Derek gearing himself up for a confrontation.

“And do what, kick in the door to every room until we happen to find him?” Stiles protested reasonably, “What if he isn’t even home?”

“Well, what do you suggest?” Derek snapped impatiently.

“We could go into the bookstore,” Scott offered, “Try describing him to the people working there? Maybe he’s a regular or something.”

“The chances of that working-”

“At least it’s less likely to get us arrested than kicking doors in-”

Stiles had stopped listening to their arguing. He was watching the people around them, eyes darting from one stranger to the next, not even knowing what he was looking for. Until he saw it. It was small, so small that it was probably a miracle he’d noticed it at all; it was a button on the strap of a girl’s bag. A purple design on a black field, the button showed two crescent moons on either side of a circle, with a pentacle inside the circle and the words Goddess Bless in stylized script underneath. He’d seen that symbol before.

He scrambled after the girl without bothering to interrupt Scott and Derek’s continuing argument. “Hey, hey, uh, miss- ma’am, um-” he called, causing several people to stare at him before the girl finally stopped and looked around.

She might have been pretty, but it was hard to tell under the excess of hair and makeup. She arched one penciled eyebrow at him as he skidded to a stop in front of her.

“Hi, you don’t know me,” he rambled, “But your button, the one on your bag,” he gestured and she looked down at it, “Yeah, that one, it’s, uh, really cool. The symbol; what does it mean?”

She blinked, taken aback but whether because of his question or his breathless enthusiasm it was hard to say. “It’s the symbol of the tri-fold goddess,” she narrowed her eyes at him, shoulders stiffening as though bracing herself for a fight.

“That’s a witch thing, right?” he pressed. His interrogation techniques could probably use a little finesse, but there was a buzz of urgency in the back of his mind and somehow he just knew that he was on the right track.

After a moment of staring at him incredulously, she nodded slowly. “The campus Wiccan club made the button. Are you... interested in joining?” a new interest lit her eyes and she dropped her arms to present less confrontational body language.

“What, me? No,” he shook his head quickly, “I’m not even a student here. But I am looking for someone, maybe you know him. He’s...” he fumbled, trying to remember what the witch had looked like. “He’s uh, sort of large? Major acne, bowl cut straight out of the ‘80’s?”

Scott and Derek had caught up to him and were looming of his shoulder, the girl eyeing them warily; or rather, Derek was looming. Scott had never mastered the art of looming, he was much better at the anxious hover.

“Sounds like Stephan,” she confirmed, clicking her tongue ring, “What do you want with him?”

“Where is he?” Derek interrupted, all intense eyebrows and vaguely threatening growl.

“I don’t really know him that well,” she took a step back, intimidated, “He’s sort of a weird-o.”

“Just, if you could please tell us where we might find him, it’d be really great,” Scott tried, his big, earnest puppy eyes managing to counter Derek’s vehemence to some extent. 

But still suspicious, she eyed them warily. “Why?”

“We, uh, met him the other night, at a party,” Stiles invented quickly, “He and my friend here,” he gestured to Derek, knowing he’d pay for this later but unable to resist, “Sort of hit it off. You know, loud music, too much beer. But he forgot to get his number, or his last name.”

She snorted, “Wow, you must have been really smashed.”

Derek made a noncommittal sound and Stiles could feel the threat of claws hidden against the back of his neck.

After a moment she relented, “He lives in the dorms, that building over there,” she gestured helpfully to point out the building, “Third floor, 3011 I think? We tried to have club meetings there a few times, but it smells disgusting.”

“Great, thank you so much,” Scott said, remembering his manners.

“Sure, but you’re probably better off staying away from him,” she warned, “He’s kind of crazy.”

“We noticed,” Stiles mumbled, but they were already hurrying away from her and she didn’t hear.

It was almost disappointingly simple to get into the dorm building; Derek grabbed the door and held it open for a couple of students who were leaving and then they slipped in behind them. Derek didn’t bother waiting for the elevator, or Stiles for that matter, instead he barged into the stairwell and took the steps three at a time, leaving Scott to follow and Stiles to scramble in both of their wakes.

Derek slowed, just a bit, when they reached the third floor, his head tilted up and nostrils flaring. Apparently the girl was right about the pungent odor, because it took only a moment for Derek to beeline toward the right door. It wasn’t until Stiles was right outside the door that he noticed the smell, like rotten eggs and smoke overlaid by incense strong enough to make him sneeze.

Scott was just behind Derek, and caught up to him just in time to prevent any literal door kicking in, though the force of his knocking wasn’t much of an improvement. After thirty seconds with no response, Derek lost patience and kicked the door in anyway.

“Ow, hey,” came a protest from inside, accompanied by the loud thump of a falling body. Derek barged through the doorway, Scott on his heels, and by the time Stiles made it in after them Scott was half-heartedly trying to pry Derek off of the witch.

“You’re going to kill him,” Scott was attempting to reason, tugging at Derek’s arm futilely, trying to pull his hand away from the witch’s throat. Derek’s claws were out, pressing menacingly against the soft flesh beneath them and he was making a deep, feral growling sound.

“Derek, stop!” Stiles commanded sharply, maintaining the presence of mind to close the door behind him. To all of their surprise, Derek obeyed; though he clearly didn’t like it, still growling dangerously. “He can’t tell us anything if you rip his throat out,” Stiles chided, moving up to stand beside the wolves.

The witch was hyperventilating, scrambling away from them until he hit the wall. “G-Get away from me,” he stammered, grabbing what appeared to be an innocuous stick and waving it at them shakily. But then his gaze landed on Stiles, and any last remnants of color drained from his face. “N-No, no way, that... that isn’t possible,” he mumbled, eyes bugging out, “I mean, you... you-”

“Died?” Derek supplied, grabbing the front of the witch’s shirt and lifting him off the ground, “We’d noticed. Anything else you’d like to share?” The witch stammered a few disjointed sounds, but nothing that resembled actual words, and looked dangerously close to actually shitting himself.

“I-I didn’t mean to!” he managed at last, squirming desperately in Derek’s hold, “I s-swear, I didn’t mean to kill anybody.”

“No, you just thought you’d make yourself a nice little werewolf slave,” Scott interjected, the tips of his fingers starting to lose their human shape too.

“Okay, enough,” Stiles cut in, “Seriously Derek, put him down. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m holding a grudge too, but he’s no good to us hysterical. We’re here for information, not revenge.”

“Maybe a little of both,” Scott amended. It struck Stiles, watching them, watching the tension in Derek’s shoulders and low burning glow of Scott’s eyes- his death hadn’t just affected him. Derek was always violent, but usually he maintained control, reason; and Scott, Scott who was so kind and so gentle, was making no move to stop Derek, the wolf beginning to peek out in the curl of his lip and the dangerous glint of his eyes. Of course Stiles knew that death affected those who were left behind, he’d experienced that himself first hand, but it was different when it was his own death and he had to face exactly who and how it had affected.

The witch blubbered, but Derek did reluctantly set him down in the nearby desk chair, though he continued to loom.

“That was your plan, right?” Stiles confirmed, pacing a little restlessly in the small room, “Brain-wipe a werewolf and use him to get back at all the asshats who laughed at you?”

“H-He said all I had to do was get one alone,” the witch mumbled, shaking violently, “Th-that the others wouldn’t even notice once he was gone.” Derek and Scott both snorted, though it wasn’t so much amusement or disbelief as it was the threat of more violence. “It would have worked!” he protested, stiffening a little at being laughed at, “If you hadn’t gotten in the way. How was I supposed to know they’d be toting around a human?”

“He who?” Stiles asked, refusing to be distracted.

“I don’t know.” Derek growled warningly. “N-No, really! I don’t. I contacted him online, someone showed me his website, I emailed him, and he sent me the stuff. I never met him; I don’t even know for sure that he is a ‘him’.”

“What’s the website?”

“I-It’s gone now. I tried to contact him when the spell went wrong but the website was taken down and the email address didn’t work. No return address on the box he sent me either.”

“So, you can’t tell us what happened,” Derek surmised, “Since it wasn’t supposed to happen. And you can’t tell us where a real witch is, who might be able to explain what went wrong.” The witch nodded, jowls quivering. “So I guess we have no more use for you,” Derek smirk had nothing to do with humor and everything to do with baring fang.

“W-Wait!” the witch protested, “I-I know a lot, about magic. Maybe if you tell me what you know I can-”

“What do you know about death?” Stiles asked bluntly, crossing his arms. A part of him had the insane urge to laugh hysterically at how he must look, interrogating as guy who looked like he was about to start crying for his mommy, flanked by his two werewolves. Another part of him was having a minor freakout over the fact that he apparently now considered Scott and Derek ‘his’ werewolves.

“I-I know that death magic is the most powerful magic there is,” he stammered, “Serious stuff, but dark.”

“And resurrection? People coming back from the dead?” Stiles pressed. Something was twisting in his chest, something that felt a little like anxiety and a little like excitement but wasn’t quite either.

The witch shook his head, sweat beading visibly on his forehead. “There are rumors, stories, you know? About ancient necromancers and crazy experiments and stuff, but nothing concrete. I don’t mess with that stuff.”

“He’s lying,” Derek growled, then amended, “Omitting at least.”

“I-I’m not!” the witch protested, “I don’t deal with death magic, that shit’s dangerous!”

“And werewolves aren’t?” Scott pointed out, raising an eyebrow pointedly.

“No, there are forces... forces, things you can’t possibly understand, or control,” he rambled manically, eyes darting around a little like those ‘things’ might suddenly leap out of the shadows under the beds, “At least I can’t. That takes a lot of power, like... like the kind of power that only exists in fairy tales and stuff.” He shuddered, looking even more terrified of the thought than he was of Derek’s fangs.

Stiles kept enough of an eye on them to be sure Derek wasn’t going to do any abrupt throat ripping or anything, but the rest of his attention was distracted. The witch clearly had nothing useful to tell them, but there was a strange sort of buzzing in the back of his mind that seemed to tell him there was something important there. 

The room was small and shabby, one bed a mess of stained sheet and the other appeared unused. A thin cloud of incense smoke seemed to be permanently hovering toward the ceiling and it was enough that Stiles was sort of choking; he didn’t know how the werewolves could stand it. The room was cluttered, books, clothes, crystals, feathers, candles, herbs, things that looked suspiciously like animal bones, and various other paraphernalia that Stiles didn’t want to look at too closely lay haphazardly on just about every surface. He picked through some of it, half curious and half disgusted.

Something was driving his movements, something he couldn’t explain and was only partially aware of. He picked up one item, then the next, touching, feeling, searching. The urge faded when he picked up a book, which he found, unsurprisingly, in a stack of books. There were a lot of them in the room, made up of a wide range of textbooks, worn paperbacks, new books with shiny dust covers and old books, very old, the kind with leather covers and cracked spines that just smelled like knowledge and history.

At first glance, there was nothing special about this book, nothing to make it stand out from all the others in the stack, not reason why Stiles would be compelled to pick it up. It was a fairly large book, thick with a yellowing dust jacket that was ripped around the edges. Daily Witchcraft the title read, and showed a picture of a smiling woman surrounded by scarves and crystals. Apart from the title, it looked like something that would be promoted on Martha Stewart or placed in the bookstore on the shelves between to 101 Tricks to Healthy Dieting and American Beauty: Renovating Your Beloved Home. But there was power in it, like a little jump of static electricity against his fingertips, and once he’d picked it up he couldn’t seem to put it down.

“Woah, wait, what are you doing with that?” complained the witch, snapping Stiles back to attention. “You can’t just go pawing around in my-”

“You killed me,” Stiles snapped, that heady, uncontrollable anger flaring up and lashing out like a living thing, “I pretty much have every right.” The witch shut up, slumping back in his chair, though there was the crease of a frown between his eyebrows and he kept his eyes on Stiles. “Come on,” he summoned the wolves, “We’re not going to learn anything here.”

Derek growled and lifted his hand, claws out. But Stiles caught his arm, halting the motion. “Leave him,” he said, “He’s useless. Definitely not a threat.” The rage was still curling like fire in the pit of his stomach, and it didn’t even occur to him that he was literally ordering Derek around, let alone that Derek was actually listening.

“He doesn’t deserve to live,” Derek snarled in protest, even as he retracted his claws.

“Yeah well, he’s not worth the effort of killing either,” Stiles reasoned, still holding onto Derek’s arm and using his grip as leverage to pull him away. “Come on, we’re leaving.” He didn’t realize until they were halfway to the car that he was still carrying the book.

________________________________________

The trip home was spent mostly in silence; Derek fumed while Scott worried, and Stiles tried to ignore both of their emoting, flipping distractedly through a few pages of the book he had taken without actually processing much of it.

By the time they got back to Beacon Hills Scott had remembered he had some errands he was supposed to run for his mom, and Stiles waved off his apologies; truthfully, he was relieved. Scott hurried off, and Derek began stomping his way up the porch stairs into his house. He hadn’t said anything, or waited for Stiles to even finish getting out of the car, so Stiles took the opportunity to subtly head for his Jeep.

Of course, Derek turned back to glower at him. “Where are you going?”

Stiles sighed, thumping his head against the cool doorframe he’d been about to open, his hopes of a clean getaway dashed. “Home,” he answered, not bothering to look at Derek, he could feel the alpha’s scowl burning into the back of his neck anyway.

“We still don’t know what’s happening with you, it isn’t safe-” Derek argued, but Stiles cut him off.

“Look, you’re welcome to lurk in my front yard all you want; provided my dad doesn’t arrest you for stalking,” he grunted, pulling his driver’s side door open with more force than necessary, “But right now, I’m going to go home and sit in my bedroom for a while, alone. I need some me time, okay? If I start to feel even the slightest bit non-human again, I’ll call you, but until then just give me some space.”

Derek had taken several long strides across the yard toward him, looking supremely unhappy, but he stopped before he actually reached the Jeep. It struck an unexpected pang in Stiles’ chest, and for a second he thought there might have been something sad and lonely in Derek’s face. It made him pause, and suddenly he couldn’t resist asking, “Where you really going to kill that witch?”

Derek blinked, taken aback. “Yes,” he said simply.

“Why?” he pressed, “I mean, he got kind of lucky when he ambushed us, but on the whole the guy’s basically a dud.”

Derek’s face contorted, head tilting as he stared at Stiles with genuine confusion. “He hurt you.” Like that was it, the only explanation necessary and a shiver ran down Stiles’ spine.

“I didn’t realize you cared so much,” Stiles mumbled, climbing into the Jeep. He didn’t see the hurt look that passed across Derek’s face, or the way his shoulders hunched slightly as though he’d been hit.


	9. Chapter 9

________________________________________

Chapter 9  
________________________________________

 

True to his word, Stiles went straight home, closed his bedroom door, and plopped himself down in bed. He spent a few minutes to simply lay there, luxuriating in the fact that there were no werewolves hovering over him, and then a few minutes more ruminating on everything that had happened in the past few weeks; there were a lot.

He had died, he’d been bitten by a werewolf, come back to life, inexplicably not become a werewolf, developed some serious temper control issues, been kissed by Derek, nearly sucked the life out of Derek, temporarily reanimated a dog, unintentionally initiated a werewolf snuggle-fest, started either sleeping walking or responding to some sort of unconscious subliminal impulses, confronted a witch, and apparently stolen one of his spell books. He came to the conclusion that maybe it would be better if he just never left his bed again.

That of course only lasted about twenty minutes before a restless impulse drove him to boot up his computer and grab the book he’d stolen from the witch; it was time for some research.

First he returned to the few sites that had been useful and appeared to be semi-reliable in dealing with supernatural shenanigans the past, scouring them for any references to people coming back from the dead. The only thing he came across was the repeated use of the word ‘necromancer’. He knew what it meant in general terms of course, he’d played enough fantasy video games, but the more he read the less cool the notion became. He scrolled through story after story of death rituals and grave robbing and deals with the devil, accompanied by woodcut images of horned men dancing around dismembered corpses. None of the stories ended happy.

Thoroughly discomfited he backed quickly out of those websites and closed the browser, moving several feet away from his computer just for good measure. He shuddered, skin crawling as he tried to purge his brain of the things he’d just read. It had been one thing to skim through the sites when researching werewolves or kanima, but this was something that was happening to him, something that had happened to him.

He rolled his neck, trying to shrug off the heebie-jeebies and his eyes fell on the book he’d taken from the witch’s room. Slowly he picked it up, a faint electric current like static shock skimming across his fingertips at first contact with the book. He opened it and flipped through the first few pages, pausing at the table of contents where he found headings for several basic elements of witchcraft: crystal magic, candles and incense, lunar cycles, different methods of divination, some basic around the house cleansing and positive energy spells. It was the sort of stuff that a few weeks ago even he would have laughed at; now he started bookmarking pages to look back at later when he wasn’t in the middle of an urgent crisis. He didn’t exactly plan to start practicing magic, but somehow he could feel the potential in the words he read, like he intuitively knew how to make these things actually work, and given the way his life had been going lately the occasional charm to ward off evil probably wouldn’t go amiss.

He was about to set the book aside and force himself to focus back on the problem at hand, when he noticed a discrepancy on the back cover of the book. He frowned, turning the book over to look at it more closely. Visually, there was nothing unusual, but when he ran his fingers over the outside of the cover, tracing the edges of a small, rectangular section that was raised above the cardboard of the rest of the cover. Setting aside the dust jacket he found a second book, tiny and almost innocuous enough to escape notice, taped to the binding of the larger book.

It was an old book, very old, and when Stiles pulled it free of the tape a jolt of power ran up his arm like lightening. The cover was a soft, pale leather but there was something... something off about it that made nausea he couldn’t explain rise in the back of his throat, it was almost enough to make him drop the book again immediately. But instead his fingers tightened and he opened the book; the inside pages were made of the same leather and it seemed to cling to his fingers, sticking to them in a sickly way. They were covered in cramped writing, strings of Latin and what eventually Stiles identified as probably Old English, interspersed with horrifyingly detailed illustrations of anatomy and what appeared to be medical procedures. Something in him recoiled on instinct, giving rise to the urge to dramatically toss the book away from himself, but at the same time he was morbidly fascinated and kept turning the pages.

The next thing he knew he was back on his computer, surrounded by pages of scribbled notes he couldn’t read, the Latin-English dictionary he’d bought a few months ago at his elbow, and the little leather book resting against his keyboard. And it was night time; he only noticed because it was too dark to try and read the notes he’d made. He dropped his pen, a wave of dizziness washing over him and he hastily scooted away from the computer. His eyes were painfully sore, his neck aching from hunching over, and his hand cramped. Baffled, he tried to remember where the day had gone but the harder he tried to think about it the dizzier and more exhausted he felt.

He stumbled across his dark bedroom into the bathroom, flicking on the light only to recoil from its brightness with a hiss and snap it off again immediately. He braced himself against the sink and splashed water on his face, but far from helping to clear his mind it felt tepid, and didn’t so much as drip down his neck as it seemed to ooze, viscous and too thick. He was shivering, he realized distantly, a sharp icy chill creeping through his veins while at the same time his skin felt feverish and stretched too tightly across the bones of his face.

Suddenly his face was smashed into his pillow and it felt like he was slowly sinking into a humid, suffocating marsh. He couldn’t think, could barely breathe. On impulse his arm lashed out and flailed around until it landed against his phone. He dropped it again twice before he succeeded in pushing the right buttons and he could already feel himself slipping away again while he waited for the call to connect.

He resurfaced gasping and there was someone hovering over him. He couldn’t see in the dark, but he didn’t have to. There was a faint tingling in his head, in his chest, in his veins and it said safe, and home, and most of all Derek.

He was struggling, but his movements were weak and lethargic. He wasn’t so much being restrained as repeatedly pushed back down against the bed. It was frustrating, a desperate restlessness driving his limbs. There was some place... some place he needed to go...

Someone was whispering his name, but it was too loud, rough and clanging against his ears. Someone was holding his hand, telling him they’d find a way to fix this, to fix him. It hadn’t occurred to him that he was broken.

It was morning, sunlight streaming in through his open window and burning his eyes. He stumbled out of bed mechanically, putting on the first clothes his hand touched and shoving things carelessly into his bag. Then he was moving out of his room, out of the house.

Suddenly Scott was there, frowning worriedly and dropping a hand on his shoulder. He was talking, but Stiles didn’t care, and he didn’t stop in deference to the hand on his shoulder either. He just kept moving forward blankly. His body was moving, but his mind wasn’t, thoughts numb, frozen and not moving beyond the next step. Scott was becoming more insistent but he continued to ignore him and by the time he was starting the Jeep’s engine Scott was in the passenger seat.

He was driving and Scott was talking rapidly into his phone. “What am I supposed to do? He won’t even look at me, it’s like he’s not even in there.” The words were jumbled and meaningless to Stiles. The only notice he took of them was to wonder why Scott was yelling; it was so loud, so unnecessarily loud.

Then he was in a bathroom, grungy and vaguely familiar. He had no idea how much time had passed between; time was an irrelevant concept. He had some distant awareness of it having passed however, of walking, sitting, listening mechanically, of being surrounded by noise and people and life, of a constant fluttering presence beside him that was life but different life than the rest. From somewhere deep inside the part of him that had been Stiles, the part that still remembered words and feelings supplied the word pack. 

But he was alone now, though there was a persistent pounding against the door, rattling the trash can that was set in front of it. He regarded the noise with only the faintest of anticipation, sensing the vibrancy of life in its source. He focused instead on the mirror in front of him, watching the face it reflected with only vague recognition. The skin was sickly pale and stretched too thin over sharp cheekbones, eyes haunted by deep shadows and flashing an unnatural white that consumed pupil and iris alike.

It was then that Stiles knew he wasn’t in control anymore. Like shattering glass the haziness and confusion broke, leaving him cold and shivering in his own mind. There was blood, just a dribble of blood that wasn’t his own smeared across his cheek and he didn’t know whose it was. He wanted to scream, to fight, to pound against the walls but there were no walls to pound against other than the illusionary ones constructed in his own mind that kept him trapped there.

His face was smiling at him, though it looked less like a smile and more like a gaping wound in the sunken flesh of his face, dead white eyes reflecting back at him with a look that could only be triumph.

The pounding hadn’t stopped, and shouting had now joined it, several voices calling his name, telling him to let open the door. “Stiles,” shouted one voice, and distantly his memory supplied Erica, “You have about two seconds to come out before we kick the door down and come in!”

But his body was already moving, hand reaching - there was more blood, blood under his fingernails, how did it get there? - to shove aside the trashcan so that it fell with a clatter and rolled away. Then he was opening the door and the face that belonged to the voice was right in front of him, all blood red lipstick and bravado. 

It was a nice face, a sweet face; not the painted mask but the real one behind it, the face of a scared little girl trying so hard to play with the big boys, a young face, filled with life and hope and energy. It made him ache with something akin to hunger. His hand was around her throat, squeezing and her big eyes had gone soft and wide with surprise. He opened his mouth, ready to drink her down but there were other faces, other lives behind her and they were closing in and he remembered that there was somewhere important he was supposed to be.

He tossed her aside carelessly, her body crashing into the others and pushing them back. Then he was moving, through halls, shoving past warm bodies without letting himself pause to taste them. And inside Stiles was screaming, screaming because he was beginning to understand, and because he was helpless to stop it.

He remembered the cold, empty void, remembered the phantom scratch of lifeless fingers reaching out to him, grasping. He remembered screaming, choking, something clawing its way down his throat, scraping him raw and ripping him apart. He remembered the never ending aching chill in his bones, the icicles in his lungs, the rage that stirred and coiled in the pit of his stomach like a living thing. Not a living thing, incidentally, but a thing, a separate entity, a parasite that had latched on to him, it’s grasp slowly growing stronger.

He could still see through his eyes, when he focused, though they weren’t his eyes any more. Somehow he had made it to the woods, leaves crunching and crackling under the feet he hadn’t told to move. He didn’t know where it was taking his body or what it had planned, but it couldn’t be good. 

Stiles had beat his hands raw against the walls that restrained him, but it had no effect, nothing but an illusion built in his own mind to visualize the horror of being trapped in his own body. He knew he couldn’t give up, couldn’t let this thing win, but he had worn himself out and he knew his efforts were futile.

But then it hit him, the smell first, a few minutes before the touch; it was the warm sweet scent of life, not just the shards of it that animated people, but the core of it that pulsed in the spread of sunshine and creeped between roots in the ground, filled with the musky fur of wild things and heady with the flex of muscle and sinew. And the scent was followed by a touch, a touch that ran hot with a fierce energy that was nothing like the cold stillness of the void. The touch was searing, solid, cutting through the ice in his veins like a knife.

The thing that had stolen his body shrieked, horrible and curdling. Just like that, he was Stiles again and collapsed limply against the solid wall of Derek’s chest. His breath came shallow and shaky and he clung to Derek’s shirt like it was the only lifeline keeping him from tumbling into a never ending chasm; maybe it was.

________________________________________

Twenty minutes later he was perched on one of the stools in what was left of the Hale kitchen, Derek’s jacket once again wrapped around him, though it did little to abate the constant shivers that ran through him. Derek himself was stuck hovering beside Stiles, since Stiles had yet to let go of him, convinced that if he did that thing would take over again.

The rest of the pack came pouring into the kitchen, Erica limping a little and Scott still sporting a few smears of blood around his neck. Stiles stiffened when he saw it, a cold shiver of guilt running down his spine despite the soft forgiveness already in Scott’s eyes; suddenly he was so ridiculously grateful he didn’t remember exactly what had happened, cowardice or not.

Derek was tense and quivering like a bowstring about to snap under Stiles’ hand, shifting with a constant restless fidgeting that was closest he could get to pacing while tethered by Stiles’ grip. None of the others dared come too close, even Scott, and Stiles tried futilely to convince himself that it was Derek’s I-will-bite-anything-that-comes-anywhere-near-me vibe that kept them away not his own recent descent into crazy.

“So what the hell happened?” Isaac asked, breaking the silence first from where he was pretending to lounge in the doorframe. He was as twisted up with fear and anxiety as the rest of them, so it wasn’t working at all, but in a weird way Stiles was distantly grateful for his attempt.

Stiles had yet to say a word since he’d regained control of his body; between the bone dry rawness of his throat and the sickly slide of nausea in his stomach he hadn’t dared. Derek just snarled, a slightly louder note in the steady rumbling growl that Stiles could feel vibrating his chest.

“Looked like he was possessed to me,” Boyd offered, his arms crossed over his chest and shoulders hunched in a way that was all defensiveness and belied his usual apparent calm.

Stiles shuddered at the word, all the more because it was true. The thing had receded but he could still feel it inside of him, now able to identify the curling worm of rage and hunger in his chest as something other than himself, something foreign and rotten that had somehow latched onto him. It was a hard thing not to think about, but he tried because the alternative was to start clawing at his chest in an attempt to rip it out, and rationally he knew that wouldn’t do any good. But while the word ‘possessed’ was technically accurate, the connotations it carried weren’t; he couldn’t say how he knew the difference exactly, but whatever this thing was it wasn’t the demon one might expect.

His attention was wandering again, his eyes flitting from one pack member to another without really processing anything they were doing or saying. His gaze caught when it landed on Erica, remembering he’d seen the her but not her face outside of the bathroom. When he squinted and narrowed his eyes he could still see it, not the makeup or the skin, or even the muscle and bone, but the intangible that was underneath. Experimentally he glanced at Boyd beside her, and saw it there too, then slowly each of the others in turn. Each was unique, and as familiar to him as the flesh and blood he was used to, a second face under the face he’d always seen; it didn’t exactly look like a face, not in the traditional sense, but he still recognized them intuitively.

It was enough to distract him, he wasn’t even sure for how long, staring at them, lost in the mesmerizing facets they presented. Souls he thought distantly, he was looking at their souls; and they were beautiful. Not perfect, far from it, they were dented and fractured, stained in places with shadows and scars, but that just made them all the more fascinating and lovely to look at. Distantly he remembered seeing them before, in those first few moments after he’d returned to life when everything had been so filled with light that was not light but he didn’t have another word for; his memories of those moments were still hazy like the aftermath of some sort of bizarre acid trip and it was hard to describe.

“Stiles,” Derek’s voice broke through his distraction. Stiles turned to look at him and stopped. Whether subconsciously avoiding it or simply too distracted by the others, it was the first time he’d seriously looked at Derek below his skin and it was... indescribable. His breath caught in his chest and his heart fluttered and all he could think was just, wow. He’d always known that Derek was screwed up, but now he understood how broken, how tragically scarred and a lot of things were suddenly starting to make sense as he read the grief, the fear, the self-loathing and the terrible, desperate loneliness that Derek kept contained so deeply inside. Suddenly he had the impossible urge to reach out and touch it, to stroke and soothe and balm and heal, to cradle this tender, hurting part of Derek and somehow make it whole again.

“Hey, focus,” Derek insisted, smacking him upside the head in a way that for Derek, really, was a love tap. He blinked and Derek was just Derek again, all frowny eyebrows and angry-tense face.

He shook his head slightly, trying to remember how thinking worked. “What?” he asked dazedly. When he looked close enough there was fear, and a little bit of sadness in Derek’s eyes, the rest of the pack watching them somewhere between anxious and baleful; he wondered what he’d missed this time.

A damp cloth came flying from somewhere over his shoulder, wetted at the sink and tossed by one of the betas, which Derek caught easily. He cupped Stiles’ face, fingers at once rough and impossibly gentle, tilting it up as he began to clean the blood - Scott’s blood - off of Stiles’ cheek. He shuddered, having forgotten it was there and once again reminded of the horror of the situation he was in. But it was also sort of hard to focus on that, with Derek’s body so warm and solid right in front of him, Derek’s fingers soft on his face and his own still curled in the fabric of Derek’s shirt. Derek was standing intimately close to him, and Stiles couldn’t help the feeling that it was at least partially Derek’s inclination to do so, not just because Stiles was using him as a personal anti-possession security blanket.

“It came back with me,” he mumbled, aiming the words somewhere in the vicinity of Derek’s navel because he couldn’t bring himself to look up and face all of their eyes staring at him. “It... It just sort of latched on to me. I didn’t know... I didn’t realize but it’s getting stronger and...” he broke off, panic thick and cloying in his throat, “I can’t stop it, when it takes over, I-”

Derek went still, but his fingers tightened on Stiles’ face as though he could hold back the spirit and ground Stiles’ in reality by sheer force of will.

“So you have some sort of... evil undead hitchhiker riding around inside of you?” Isaac’s face accurately expressed how disgusting a notion it was.

“It’s not evil, or at least it wasn’t always,” he felt inexplicably compelled to defend. He shuddered remembering the inescapable cold emptiness of the void; for the brief time he’d been there it wasn’t so bad, but to be stuck there for years, centuries maybe, anchorless while everything he had once been, even the very concept of humanity unraveled and was lost.

“Doesn’t matter,” Derek interjected, “What matters is how we get rid of it.”

“Right, and how do we do that?” Scott asked, for once looking to Derek for answers. But it was obvious Derek didn’t have them, none of them did. They may have been able to muddle their way through crazy alphas, psychopathic hunters, and kanimas, but this was way beyond their level.

Derek was floundering for an answer when suddenly he went ridged, nose in the air and eyes bleeding to red. Moments later the rest of the wolves followed suit, Scott beginning to growl while Isaac and Erica crouched down with a snarl. Stiles saw the movement split seconds before Derek actually made it, and he made a wild grab for him with his free hand but he was too slow, Derek pulling away and rushing for the back door. Stiles lunge unbalanced him and he nearly fell off of the stool he was perched on, so that by the time he’d recovered himself enough to follow the rest of the pack was already ahead of him.

There wasn’t much space between the back of the house and the tree line, but in the little strip there was the pack were circling around the huddled, whimpering form of the witch, claws out and snarling dangerously. 

“P-Please!” the witch squeaked, hands clasped over his head, “I’m here to help! I-I want to help.”

Derek made a disbelieving sound, but by then Stiles had caught up and pushed his way through the ring of menacing wolves. “Start talking,” Stiles snapped. He could feel the witch’s power, meager though it was, and felt the thing inside of him react to it.

The witch stayed on his knees, crawling through the thick bed of leaves toward him. “When you came back, you didn’t come back alone did you?” he guessed with unnerving accuracy, “I felt it before, the discord in you. You want to get rid of it; I can help. I know spells, anti-possession spells, banishing rituals. With my knowledge and your power we can beat it, send it back through the veil.”

“Why?” Derek asked suspiciously. Stiles had taken several steps back to stay out of the witch’s reach and Derek moved protectively in front of him, “Why come creeping out here and offer to help when you know I’d happily kill you?”

The reminder made the witch pause, his small eyes darting around the ring of wolves as though he’d just remembered how serious a situation he’d crawled into. “For the greater good?” he offered shakily, “That thing is weak now, but it’s getting stronger. If it becomes powerful enough to take over him completely, or worse manifest on its own without his body, we’re all in deep shit.”

“He’s right,” Stiles confirmed, swallowing though his voice still cracked, “All it knows is death; it barely even remembers being human.”

“Besides,” the witch looked past Derek in an effort to meet Stiles’ eyes, “I owe you a debt. This is at least partially my fault.”

Scott snorted and muttered, “Partially?”

The wolves were still all bristled and growly, but Stiles ignored them, eyes narrowed as he studied the witch. “Fine,” he relented, “Get out of the dirt and let’s talk.”

When they returned to the kitchen Stiles didn’t sit, and neither did the rest of the wolves, but Boyd shoved the witch down onto one of the stools, nearly toppling it. All in all, it wasn’t much different than it had been outside, the wolves all looming menacingly around him while Stiles watched him with folded arms.

“Alright, you say you have knowledge; impart it,” Stiles prompted.

“You found the book,” the witch sidestepped; it wasn’t a question. “The one you took from me. You have it with you.” His eyes were on Stiles’ pocket, small and greedy.

Stiles swallowed, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the small leather book. He didn’t remember putting it there that morning, but all the same, there it was. The witch’s eyes lit up and reached for it, but the wolves recoiled, nose wrinkled.

“What is that?” Scott asked.

“It stinks,” protested Isaac, hand over his nose. Even Derek was twitching a little.

“Is that... human?” Jackson looked thoroughly disgusted.

Stiles blinked at the book, skin still crawling in reaction to touching it and he supposed he’d known what it was on some level, but he just shrugged. Yeah, a book made out of human skin was pretty disgusting, but the thing inside of him was stirring again, squirming with excitement and that was a much higher priority.

“How is this going to help?” he asked the witch, refusing to give it to him.

“You know what it is?” the witch pressed.

“I know neither of us should be reading it,” he confirmed. But he also knew that his unwelcome hitchhiker had read it, at least most of it, and bits and pieces leaked into his own mind, dark things, things he really really didn’t want to know. Unfortunately, he was pretty sure one of those pieces contained what the witch was getting at, and with a sinking sense of doom he was pretty sure they didn’t really have a choice.

“We’re going to need some supplies.” Stiles really didn’t like how delighted the witch looked.

________________________________________

“I don’t like this,” Derek grumbled, echoing Stiles’ thoughts perfectly. They were back in the clearing where Stiles had died, watching while the witch drew symbols in the dirt muttering in Latin, and the betas wrangled a large buck they’d caught. Stiles’ stomach was twisting and he couldn’t be sure if it was the spirit vying for control again or good old fashioned terror.

“I don’t like being possessed,” he retorted, even though he agreed with Derek. Derek was hovering literally right next to his shoulder, so close that they brushed against each other with every breath. He wasn’t sure anymore which of them was the cause of the close contact; initially it had been him, convinced that somehow Derek’s presence was helping him keep control over the thing inside of him, but Derek was radiating so much anxiety and protectiveness that if Stiles wasn’t so busy freaking out about that they were about to do, he’d probably be freaking out about when the hell exactly Derek had decided he warranted that level of feelings.

“You know he’s hiding something, right?” Derek eyed the witch like he was contemplating what his insides would taste like, and Stiles couldn’t say he entirely blamed him.

“Yeah, I know,” he sighed, “But he’s right, if the spell works it’ll great rid of this thing. And besides, we don’t really have much choice.” He realized distantly that he was leaning back, just a little, just enough for Derek’s shoulder to become a solid, constant presence against his own, rather than an occasional brush. Derek made a rumbly discontent sound, and maybe he was imagining it but Stiles could have sworn that Derek was leaning against him in return. “We can deal with the witch after we deal with the parasite from hell.”

“I have a name you know,” the witch interjected, and Stiles tensed, not having realized he could hear their conversation.

“Do we look like we care?” Derek snapped, which was a little petty. Stiles just wanted the whole ordeal over with, however, so he once again stepped between the two of them.

“Are we doing this or not?” he asked, rolling his shoulders in an effort to prepare himself. Not that anything really could have prepared him, since he had only a general notion of what they were about to do, and no idea what it would actually be like.

The witch nodded, moving back to where he’d scratched symbols into the dirt, jittery with excitement and gesturing for Stiles to follow him. Stiles did, skirting almost subconsciously around the exact spot where he’d died, still able to feel the shadows that gathered there. Derek moved to follow, but Stiles waved him back.

“Don’t get too close,” he warned, his pulse starting to go thready and nervous, “Just in case.” Reluctantly Derek fell back to outside the circle the witch had made, though he made it very clear he wasn’t happy about it. Not that any of them were, except for the witch who appeared to be on cloud nine.

He faced Stiles, pulling a small knife with an overly ornate handle from the bag of supplies he’d brought. Stiles eyed it warily. “We have to combine our power,” the witch explained, rolling up his own shirt sleeve.

“You didn’t mention that part before,” Derek scowled, despite his removed position. 

“How’s it going to help?” Erica added from her spot sitting on the deer’s back, “Aren’t you basically a dud, magically speaking?”

The witch glowered at her, his round face contorting for just a moment into something dark and filled with loathing. “The spirit is too familiar with his power,” he explained stiffly, “It’s been feeding off of it for weeks. We need a different energy to help shake it loose.”

“Why can’t one of us do it?” Scott asked, already moving to roll up his sleeve.

“You’re werewolves,” the witch snorted, “Everything about you screams life; this is death magic.”

Scott hesitated, glancing at Stiles who squirmed and shrugged uncomfortably. “Pack magic is different,” he confirmed reluctantly, though it felt like a betrayal to agree with the witch on anything, “The way it feels... it’s completely different. I don’t know if they could mix.”

“They can’t,” the witch cut in impatiently, “And the longer we stand around talking about it the stronger that thing inside you is going to get.” He gestured pointedly toward Stiles’ chest with the knife, and as though in response Stiles felt the thing shift and stir again. It knew what they were doing, or at least what they planned to do, and it was already trying to fight back, the irrational, all consuming anger rising up to cloud Stiles’ mind.

Stiles nodded sharply. “Just get on with it,” he snapped. He made an effort to soften his voice, not because he felt bad for being short with the witch, but because he knew the anger wasn’t his and he was loathe to give the spirit that possessed him even that much leeway.

The witch took a shaky breath, holding out his bare forearm while he gripped the knife in his other hand; both hands were shaking. He took another breath, rough and harsh, pressing the blade of the knife against his pale flesh, but hesitated to press the blade in. Stiles could feel the tension and fear rolling off of him, but it was mixed with excitement and resolve; this was the most thrilling thing the witch had ever experienced, the closest he had ever come to real power and he was quivering with exhilaration as much as he was nervousness.

“Do you need help?” Isaac offered with impatient sarcasm as he adjusted his grip on the deer’s antlers. It of course had no hope of breaking free, not between Isaac and Boyd each holding tight to an antler and Scott and Erica sitting on its back to pin it to the ground, but it still tried, eyes showing white all the way around and snorting anxiously. Stiles couldn’t help thinking that the deer understood the forces they were about to wrestle better than they did, and it certainly had the sense to be terrified.

“Shut up!” the witch retorted, hands trembling more than ever. Though perhaps that was for the best, as the shaking of his hand drew the first drop of blood, and from there he made one long, clean slice across his forearm. Breathless, face shining with triumph as a slow drip of blood began to fall to the leaves below them; the witch looked up and met Stiles eyes, radiating an excitement Stiles didn’t share.

All the same, he took the knife when the witch held it out to him, swallowing back the nausea that twisted in his stomach telling him that this was wrong, so wrong. His arm looked shockingly pale in the cold afternoon light, despite the freckles that painted it. The blade of the knife was already warm with the witch’s blood when it touched his skin, sending a shiver down his spine. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes and refusing to let himself think about it while he pressed the knife down. He bit his lip hard, unable to contain the soft hiss of pain as his skin split and red blood began to well over.

Unable to contain his enthusiasm the witch pressed forward immediately, clasping their arms together so that the mirrored cuts met. Their blood mingled, smearing across their arms and dripping into the ground below. It was like an electric current, searing through him the second their blood mixed, lightening zinging through his veins and bringing every molecule to life.

His eyes widened and he saw everything. Energy bound together every leaf, every particle in the air, every strand of life around them filled with it. Not only did he see it, he heard it, tasted it, felt it, filling the air, the trees, the wolves, him. He’d seen only flashes of it before, when he watched the shadows gather around his death imprint, when he gazed at the souls of his friends beneath their face, but now he saw everything, just for a moment, and it was at once wonderful and too much to bear.

He didn’t have time to absorb it, however, and after only the briefest of moments he was forced back into his skin, drawn back to the drama of human life. The thing inside of him had shrieked the instant the connection formed, rushing headlong for the surface of his consciousness. It sensed the power awakening in him and made a desperate bid for it, seeking ravenously to consume it.

Stiles would have collapsed to his knees under the onslaught had the witch not been clinging so tightly to his arm. As it was he was all but blinded to the physical world around him, torn between the mesmerizing sight of the magic that held together the fabric of reality, and turning inward toward the battle for his own body. He didn’t see the witch pull out the flesh-bound book, or the betas dragging the deer forward into the circle, not in the literal sense that prior to that moment he’d believed was the only way to see things. But he was aware of them, intimately, feeling every moment, every labored breath as the betas fought the deer, every terrified twitch of the deer’s muscles. He felt too the cold hilt of the knife still in his hand, felt it humming, eager to taste more blood. He felt the spirit throwing itself against the mental barriers he’d intuitively created to hold it back, and he scrambled to reinforce them.

Blinded as he was by the sudden range of extrasensory input that had opened to him, he was just as deafened by it. It was a cacophony of noise, surrounding him, inside of him, and quite possibly being made by him. The spirit inside him was screaming, wordless, meaningless, never ending shrieks of rage and hunger. The deer too was screaming, rage-less but terrified, a simple creature that had lived a harmless life suddenly ripped from its innocence into a world of dark magic that should never have touched it. The wolves were growling, not his friends with their human faces but the wild animal inside of them, the shadows that were all teeth and fur and wild animal instinct pacing inside of them like beasts in a zoo, snarling at the outside world that their human halves kept them from.

It was dizzying, and far too much to process all at once. His human mind, the consciousness that was Stiles Stilinski shattered, flying in a thousand directions in the effort to contain it all and what was left behind became something else entirely; something removed from the limitations and inhibitions of humanity.

The deer was directly in front of him now; all he had to do was reach out a hand to the beast and all of the fight went out of it, leaving it quivering helplessly before him, frozen in place. He gestured for the betas to move back out of the circle, though only a fraction of his seemingly infinite attention was being paid to them. The witch began to chant, tongue thick and heavy as he stumbled through the Latin verses; Stiles simply watched the deer, their eyes nearly a perfect match. At that moment he had more in common with the terrified buck than he did with any of the other beings in that clearing, being made up of instinct and pure, simple life. He grieved the fact that he would have to take that life, wasting it in order to free himself.

The spirit was fighting harder than ever, and for a moment it managed to take control, causing him to double over and drop the knife. But it was too late, the witch was still chanting and he could feel it being forced from his body; but this was not the abstract feeling with which he was currently observing the rest of this world, this was sharp and real and painful. The spirit screamed and he screamed with it, the immediacy of the pain momentarily snapping him back into himself, into the shape of Stiles again as the spirit tore his insides apart in a last desperate refusal to leave him. The incantation rose and swirled around them, calling out a wave of power from somewhere deep, deep inside of Stiles’ chest and suddenly the spirit was just gone. He watched it filled the deer’s eyes with unnatural rage and wanted to sink to his knees with the relief of being alone in his own body again.

But the ritual wasn’t over and he wasn’t truly free yet; there was work still to do. Shakily he picked the knife up from the dirt where it had fallen, leaves clinging to the tacky surface of its blade. He remembered who he was, remembered the shape of Stiles, but he wasn’t yet fully himself again, still far too scattered and buffeted by the currents of magic and life around him. Ultimately, that may have been a blessing, since the human Stiles would have hesitated, squeamish and filled with regret. Except when he’d hit the kanima with his Jeep, which hadn’t really seriously harmed him anyway, the human Stiles had never really intentionally hurt anything bigger than a cockroach. But this Stiles, the Stiles that was fractured into a thousand pieces, listening to the far distant song of the stars and tasting the dirt that surrounded the worms, that was humming and alive with all the breath of the earth and sky and everywhere in between; this Stiles did not hesitate.

The deer bleated but did not thrash as the knife sank into his throat, and hot blood painted Stiles’ face and chest. It was clumsy and messy, his movements jerky and utterly lacking in finesse; his mind knew what it was doing, understood the task, but he was limited by the weaknesses of the body that contained him. But it was working, the deer’s bleats becoming the enraged shrieks of the spirit as more and more blood flowed into the dirt and the frail, broken body spasmed. 

Finally it dropped to the ground, and Stiles let the knife drop with it. He was breathing heavily, staring blankly at the puddle of blood around his feet. He was falling back together, piece by piece and he felt sick, so very sick. And he was getting sicker, a cold chill rolling through him, heart picking up speed as though attempting to escape his chest. He fell to his knees, hand clamped over his mouth and only then did he realize that the witch still held a death grip onto his other arm.

The witch wasn’t anxious or cowed anymore, his nails digging into Stiles’ arm and his face lit with a maniac light. He was practically glowing with power, with the magic that filled him, all the while Stiles grew rapidly weaker. He saw what the witch was doing instantly, distantly wondering how he hadn’t seen it before; they were still connected, the bond leaving Stiles, and his magic, open and vulnerable to the witch.

Desperately, Stiles wrenched his arm from the witch’s grasp, trying to scramble away from him, but the loss of physical contact couldn’t break the bond now, it was too strong. The witch just laughed, already drunk on the power that he was never meant to have. Stiles’ vision blurred, and the chill gave way to heat, immense heat that filled him with fire and turned his cheeks a flaming flushed pink. Both were magic, magic that wasn’t supposed to coexist but somehow mingled within him. Death: his own magic, the magic of spirits and shadows and hidden intangible things; and life: the magic of breath and growth that filled the werewolves to the brim, making them so much more than human.

He had nearly forgotten the wolves, but there they were, not just around him physically but in his awareness, connected to him. He should have known it, should have realized right away in the way that they hovered around him, in Derek’s fierce protectiveness, and especially after the way they had reacted to him at the full moon. Derek’s bite may not have turned him into one of them, but it had connected him intimately and permanently with the pack.

The magics mixed inside of him, life and death, making him something impossible and limitless; and now the witch was trying to steal that. For a moment, just a moment, Stiles almost let him. He hadn’t wanted this, he’d never wanted power, and he’d never wanted Derek to save him. But Derek, he could feel Derek on the edge of his awareness, feel the heat and the brush of fur and the soft scent that he now recognized as Derek’s life flowing through him... through him and into the witch.

He was on his knees, and when he craned around to look so was Derek, and the rest of the pack behind him. But he didn’t have to look, he could feel it, the bond running from him to Derek like a thick, invisible rope that twined their life forces together. A part of him, the part that was still shattered and infinite understood now, understood how he had come back, even if death would never really leave him, understood what was keeping him anchored in the world of the living. He remembered the night of the full moon, and the morning after, remembered the feeling of being wrapped up in the middle of the pack, of being connected, of being at home; but he wasn’t a parasite like the spirit that had latched on to him, no, this bond was mutual, symbiotic because they had received comfort from him in return.

Yet, just as he realized everything that he had, it was being taken from him. The witch was connected to him, and through him to Derek, and through Derek to the rest of the pack, and he was killing them all. They had collapsed one by one, gasping as their breath was stolen and their faces turned grey. Derek was fighting it, he could see, fighting to protect his pack, trying to close his connection to them so that they at least would be safe. He met Stiles’ eyes over the distance between them, and there was fear in his eyes, fear and pain, not just for himself.

Something in Stiles rebelled. This witch would not hurt his pack. He fought back, struggling to his feet and facing the witch on shaky but determined legs as he strained to take control of the energy that surrounded them, to draw it back into himself. It should have been easy, this witch was weak and always would be no matter how much power he stole, but Stiles’ desperate, intuitive grasps were ineffective and only served to make the witch laugh more. Except it wasn’t just the witch laughing, and when he focused Stiles could see it, the spirit, looming behind the witch, stealing power from him even as he stole it from them, growing more and more powerful by the second.

It was laughing too, echoing the witch who didn’t even seem aware it was there. Stiles tried to warn him, but his voice croaked and died in his dry throat. The spirit flickered and grew larger, more solid until it was no longer a shadow hovering behind the witch but a thing, incorporeal still but not for much longer. It lifted its phantom arms, spreading bony claws that only vaguely resembled fingers and the air stirred, beginning to whip around them as it laughed. It may not have always been evil, but it was now, nothing but darkness and shadows bound together by hatred and a desperate hunger for life.

Stiles legs gave out again and he crashed to his hands and knees, feeling them crack as he sank into the hard dirt. Black and red dots danced in front of his wavering vision and he could feel the pain settling in his bones, the darkness rising up to grab him; he knew this feeling, he remembered what death felt like and he balked at it. His fingers curled in the loam as he tried to fight back, and the cold metal hilt of the knife he’d dropped earlier met them, as though placed there specifically for his use.

He took a careful breath, willing himself to focus, to formulate the plan he already intuitively knew. His eyes were closed and useless, but he didn’t need them, he could still sense the strings that kept them all connected like giant neon signs. First he turned to the line connecting him to the witch, his intent all too clear, but it was thick and fresh and he’d willingly helped forge it. The connection between him and Derek however, that was thin and weak, frayed and strained by the discord not just between them but that separated the entire pack, the disunity that they had only just begun learning to overcome. Dread filled him, but he knew it was his only option; his life alone wouldn’t be enough to sustain the spirit, it may drain him and the witch dry but without the pack too it would burn out before it could do any more harm.

He lifted the knife slowly, the hilt cold as ice and heavy as lead in his hand. Truthfully, it was a symbolic gesture, the physical knife unable to touch the unphysical bond, but it gave him direction, purpose, a thin razor edge to focus his power into.

“No!” Derek’s voice pierced through him like a lance, both physically assaulting his ears and travelling down their bond to vibrate in his chest, “Don’t, Stiles,” there was desperation in his voice, a pleading that both shocked Stiles and didn’t.

He shook his head wordlessly, unable to answer, the design carved into the hilt of the knife digging into his palm. 

“Stiles,” Derek’s voice cracked, like his name was the last thing Derek had to hold onto. The alpha staggered to his feet, and for a second Stiles was sure Derek was going to tackle him. But with a growl and a rush of displaced air it wasn’t Stiles that Derek was launching himself at. It was a stupid move, a monumentally stupid move and Stiles knew that but Derek apparently didn’t as he reached to rip the witch’s throat out, as he had threatened several times before.

He never made it. The spirit was just suddenly there, shadowed claws catching Derek in mid-air, piercing him all the way through and from the way Derek’s eyes widened Stiles knew he couldn’t see it coming. With cruel disinterest the spirit tossed Derek’s body aside and it slammed into the trunk of a nearby tree. Slumped at the base of the tree, Derek didn’t move.

Stiles screamed, the howls and whimpers of the wolves joining in. The unnatural wind that was whipping through the trees picked up to torrential levels, threatening to dissolve the misty shadows that were the spirit. Stiles was on his feet again, buoyed by the gale, though he needn’t have moved at all. He still gripped the knife in his hand, but it was nothing but a flat piece of metal, the energy that surrounded him, flowing through him was his real weapon. He halted the flow of power running into the witch and smashed through his defenses like so much paper. The witch cried out under the onslaught, stumbling and holding his hands defensively over his face as though that could protect him from the raw force of life that Stiles shot at him.

Every blast, every metaphorical punch that Stiles sent his way made him fall back another step, then two. Stiles’ aim was unwavering and it was only a matter of moments before the witch was tilting over the edge of shadows that still gathered around the spot where Stiles had died, the small scar in the fabric of reality that he’d left behind when he’d come back through what was meant to be a one-way divide. One more blow was all it took, as Stiles simultaneously snapped the connection between them and the witch was tumbling backwards with a final shriek, dragging the spirit with him.

Ultimately, it was a little anticlimactic. The witch’s body hit the ground with a heavy thud, though both he and the spirit had vanished. The pool of shadows closed up, collapsing in on itself as it accepted the return of two souls for the two that had escaped; the universe didn’t much care that one of them was a different soul, the balance had been restored. The wind died and the magic faded and Stiles nearly fell as the abrupt receding of so much power left him drained and exhausted.

His sense of victory didn’t last, as the wolves slowly started to creep forward, circling around their fallen alpha with low whines. Stiles forced his body to work, slipping on the blood wet leaves until he collapsed at the base of the tree beside Derek’s motionless body. Isaac was making a low keening sound at his elbow and Stiles was inclined to echo it as he took in the severity of the damage. 

It wasn’t too late, he knew that, he could still feel the weak pulse of Derek’s life force at the end of the invisible string connecting them. Panic rose in him because Derek was dying; fast. “No way, dude,” he muttered, pushing Derek enough to roll him onto his back, “If I have to stick around, so do you.” He leaned in impulsively, and for a moment the memory of Derek’s ashen face the first time they’d kissed flashed through his mind, but this was different, this was important. When their lips met there was nothing sweet, or passionate, or even warm about it, Stiles was still half stiff with the chill of death and Derek was fading fast; Derek wasn’t responding either.

But like a jolt of static electricity the heat almost immediately began to rise in the pit of Stiles’ stomach and he gave it back, breathing it deep into Derek, filling him with it until he glowed with it. Like the rapid run of water downhill Derek’s flesh filled back in, his chest rose and ribs mended with a snap, and then he was moving, hand fisting in Stiles’ shirt and lips moving against him. His eyes snapped open and they were staring at each other from an impossibly close distance.

“Deal,” Derek murmured, lips moving against Stiles’ as they turned up into the faintest hint of a smile. Stiles didn’t know whether to laugh in relief of hit him. Scott provided an alternative by making a disgusted sound and slapping them both on the back.


	10. Epilogue

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Epilogue  
________________________________________

Stiles sat cross legged in the grass, his head in his hands. He was staring at the stone in front of him, but he wasn’t seeing it, his eyes blurred and unfocused. It was quite, the cemetery mostly empty as the evening shadows grew long.

For two days he’d maintained a determined not-thinking-about-it stance; he’d caught up on his homework, lied, dodged, and apologised to his dad about all the classes he’d missed over the past few weeks, and tried very, very hard to forget the rush of magic singing in his veins. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, especially since the magic was still there, still a part of him, and apparently always would be. It wasn’t constant, uncontrolled and unfocused. Somedays every time he blinked he’d get a glimpse at the soul of whoever he was looking at, sometimes he’d instinctively reach out to catch something before he knew it was going to fall over, and he had to avidly avoid roadkill for fear of the sudden urge to put life back where it didn’t belong anymore. But he couldn’t do any of it on purpose, not that he’d tried much. The truth was, it scared him.

But he’d known he couldn’t avoid it forever, and a mysterious but irrefusable message from Dr. Deaton had brought that time to an end. ‘I think it’s time we had a talk’ had led to him giving up his entire afternoon, and left his head reeling so badly he’d found himself at the cemetery gate without even realizing he’d meant to go there. And so he sat, processing, trying to accept the reality that was his life now, if the term ‘life’ even technically applied anymore.

He didn’t so much hear the footsteps behind him as feel they way they ruffled the grass, but he didn’t look around. He didn’t need to, the low buzz in the back of his mind had been telling him Derek was nearby for twenty minutes already. He swallowed, because this too was something he’d been avoiding; though he was pretty sure he hadn’t been the only one. The entire pack, even Scott, had been skirting around him, not meeting his eyes and making excuses to be elsewhere ever since they’d disposed of the witch’s body in the woods.

After a moment’s hesitation, Derek sat down beside him. He clasped his arms loosely around his knees and sat just close enough that they weren’t quite touching but Stiles could still feel him. A few weeks ago Stiles would have been surprised and at least a little bit uncomfortable, now he just sighed and leaned over just enough to lightly nudge Derek’s shoulder in greeting.

“I thought we were done with the protective stalking,” Stiles said, for the sake of something to say.

“I wanted to talk,” Derek explained, not bothering to protest the stalker comment, “Isaac said he saw you here.”

“So much for my super secret meeting with Deaton,” he mumbled. Derek didn’t say anything, just waited and Stiles sighed. “It’s not going to go away,” he reported, picking at a blade of grass, “The magic. It’s... part of me now.”

“Death magic,” Derek said, the slightest curl of distaste to his lip.

“And pack magic,” he shrugged, “It’s not supposed to be possible, but apparently I’m really special. As far as Deaton know it’s never happened before. He described it as ‘unique circumstances’.”

Derek snorted, “Helpful. So what does it mean?”

“It means I’m... magic,” he chewed his lip, tugging up pieces of grass compulsively, “‘Nobody escapes death untouched,’ according to Deaton, when I came back it was like I, I don’t know, left a piece of me behind. I’m still... connected to death.”

“But you’re also connected to us, to the pack.”

“To you,” Stiles corrected, “Technically. I’m connected to the pack because you are. Deaton said you and the pack work like an anchor, to keep me grounded here, alive. Like I’m tapped straight in the pack bond, and the stronger the pack is the stronger I am; hence the snuggle-fest of pack bonding.”

Derek’s forehead was wrinkled as he contemplated the distant tree line and Stiles couldn’t resist jostling his shoulder a little. “So it looks like you got what you wanted,” he teased, though he was unable to completely hide the hollow ring that lay under his humor, “You’re stuck with me.”

Silence fell between them for several long minutes, during which Stiles reclined on the grass, staring up at the darkening sky and Derek stared broodingly at the headstone in front of them. “Are you still mad at me?” he asked eventually, a barely there tremor of vulnerability in his voice.

Stiles didn’t look at him, not needing to ask what he was referring to. He sighed, eyes tracking the flight of a bird overhead distractedly. “No,” he answered eventually, “I mean it’s not like I wanted to die, not really. And I know it’s not exactly rational to blame you.” He took a breath like he meant to say more, but just shrugged instead. 

“We can’t just pull miracle cures out of our fangs,” Derek quoted quietly, looking down.

Stiles swallowed, blinking back the slight burn in the corners of his eyes, letting his silence speak for him.

After a few minutes Stiles forced his eyes to clear and his throat to loosen. “Besides,” he said, hoping to disperse the cloud of gloom that had settled over them, “I get it now, why you did it.” He tilted his head in time to see Derek’s shoulders stiffen. “Though you could have just asked me to dinner or something,” he pointed out, a slow smirk spreading across his lips as he leaned back on his elbows, “I mean I get that you’re sort of an actions are better than words guy, but really as far as grand gestures go-”

Derek growled warningly at him and suddenly laughter was bubbling up in Stiles’ chest, quiet but uncontrollable and holding just an edge of hysteria. It was absurd, but after so many days of fear and anxiety and dizzying confusion, something in him just broke and he laughed. Derek scowled, but the tension was draining out of his shoulders and it was taking him visible effort to maintain it. Stiles figured they’d be alright, eventually.

“It’s not like I planned it,” Derek protested, half complaint, half barely repressed smile.

Stiles rolled his eyes, “Still. And really though, dinner.” Stiles had never claimed to be suave, and they’d probably be waiting forever if he left it up to Derek to make the next move without at least a little prompting.

Derek huffed and rolled gracefully to his feet in a way that was highly inappropriate and unfair given Stiles’ position on the ground and a little behind him. He held a hand out to Stiles, raising an eyebrow expectantly. Stiles started up at him, smirking petulantly. Derek rolled his eyes and growled, “Stiles,” he insisted, like that was a command all by itself.

“Yes, Derek?” Stiles answered innocently, stubbornly remaining on the ground.

Scowling and huffing, Derek relented and grit out between his teeth, “Would you like to go to dinner with me?”

Stiles grinned and took Derek’s hand, letting Derek pull him to his feet. He couldn’t be sure if it was intentional, or Derek had accidentally gotten a little too enthusiastic, but somehow Stiles ended up running face first into Derek’s chest. Not about to waste the opportunity, he leaned in and pressed a chaste kiss to Derek’s lips. “Alright, sourwolf,” he teased, “Feed me.”

Apparently, Derek’s idea of revenge was wrapping an arm around Stiles’ waist and holding him there as they left the cemetery; Stiles wasn’t about to complain. He did pause however as he caught sight of the old man standing beside the gate, looking sad and forlorn as he watched the old woman sitting on the bench across the street.

He stopped, pulling away from Derek. “Hold on a minute,” he said distractedly, heading across the street to the old woman.

She looked up at him as he approached and raised an eyebrow at Derek hovering beside the gate watching them. “New friend?” she asked mildly.

He flushed a little, unable to resist glancing at Derek as he sat beside her on the bench, an unconscious smile on his lips. Derek had eventually reclaimed his jacket, and he stood with his hands sunk in his pockets, the last rays of sunshine highlighting his hair as he waited impatiently. But Stiles had come over here for a reason, and he forced himself to look away. “You were right,” he said, “About remembering your husband the way he was when he was alive.”

She blinked at him, raising an eyebrow.

“But you can’t hold onto him forever,” he glanced back toward the cemetery, where the old man stood just inside the fence watching them, “I mean, remember him yeah. But if you keep holding onto his death like this, neither of you are ever going to be able to move on. I think, maybe you should finally say goodbye.”

She stared at him blankly, and having said his piece he stood and returned to Derek’s side. A few minutes later Stiles was behind the wheel of the Jeep, cheerfully arguing with Derek about where to go for dinner. As they drove past Stiles glanced over at the cemetery where the old lady was making her way slowly between the rows of graves, the old man at her side.


End file.
